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“Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News

SIMPLE SUMMARY: This article explores the role of print media in reporting the conflict between the Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) and human populations in Australia. The results indicate that this issue is primarily covered during the spring “swooping” season in the regional and suburban pre...

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Autores principales: van Vuuren, Kitty, O’Keeffe, Scott, Jones, Darryl N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27128947
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani6050029
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author van Vuuren, Kitty
O’Keeffe, Scott
Jones, Darryl N.
author_facet van Vuuren, Kitty
O’Keeffe, Scott
Jones, Darryl N.
author_sort van Vuuren, Kitty
collection PubMed
description SIMPLE SUMMARY: This article explores the role of print media in reporting the conflict between the Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) and human populations in Australia. The results indicate that this issue is primarily covered during the spring “swooping” season in the regional and suburban press. ABSTRACT: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) is a common bird found in urban Australian environments where its nest defense behavior during spring brings it into conflict with humans. This article explores the role of print media in covering this conflict. Leximancer software was used to analyze newspaper reports about the Australian Magpie from a sample of 634 news stories, letters-to-the editor and opinion pieces, published in newspapers from around Australia between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2014. The results confirm that stories about these birds are primarily published in the daily regional and weekly suburban press, and that the dominant story frame concerns the risk of “swooping” behavior to cyclists and pedestrians from birds protecting their nests during the spring breeding season. The most prominent sources used by journalists are local and state government representatives, as well as members of the public. The results show that the “swooping season” has become a normal part of the annual news cycle for these publications, with the implication that discourse surrounding the Australian Magpie predominantly concerns the risk these birds pose to humans, and ignores their decline in non-urban environments.
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spelling pubmed-48808462016-05-27 “Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News van Vuuren, Kitty O’Keeffe, Scott Jones, Darryl N. Animals (Basel) Article SIMPLE SUMMARY: This article explores the role of print media in reporting the conflict between the Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) and human populations in Australia. The results indicate that this issue is primarily covered during the spring “swooping” season in the regional and suburban press. ABSTRACT: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) is a common bird found in urban Australian environments where its nest defense behavior during spring brings it into conflict with humans. This article explores the role of print media in covering this conflict. Leximancer software was used to analyze newspaper reports about the Australian Magpie from a sample of 634 news stories, letters-to-the editor and opinion pieces, published in newspapers from around Australia between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2014. The results confirm that stories about these birds are primarily published in the daily regional and weekly suburban press, and that the dominant story frame concerns the risk of “swooping” behavior to cyclists and pedestrians from birds protecting their nests during the spring breeding season. The most prominent sources used by journalists are local and state government representatives, as well as members of the public. The results show that the “swooping season” has become a normal part of the annual news cycle for these publications, with the implication that discourse surrounding the Australian Magpie predominantly concerns the risk these birds pose to humans, and ignores their decline in non-urban environments. MDPI 2016-04-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4880846/ /pubmed/27128947 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani6050029 Text en © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
van Vuuren, Kitty
O’Keeffe, Scott
Jones, Darryl N.
“Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News
title “Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News
title_full “Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News
title_fullStr “Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News
title_full_unstemmed “Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News
title_short “Vicious, Aggressive Bird Stalks Cyclist”: The Australian Magpie (Cracticus tibicen) in the News
title_sort “vicious, aggressive bird stalks cyclist”: the australian magpie (cracticus tibicen) in the news
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27128947
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani6050029
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