Owning the Problem: Media Portrayals of Overweight Dogs and the Shared Determinants of the Health of Human and Companion Animal Populations

Abstract

Weight-related health problems have become a common topic in Western mass media. News-coverage has also extended to overweight pets, particularly since 2003 when the U.S. National Academy of Sciences announced that obesity was also afflicting co-habiting companion animals in record numbers. To characterize and track views in popular circulation on causes, consequences and responsibilities vis-à-vis weight gain and obesity, in pets as well as in people, this study examines portrayals of overweight dogs that appeared from 2000 through 2009 in British, American and Australian mass media. The ethnographic content analysis drew inspiration from the literature in population health, animal-human relationships, communication framing and the active nature of texts in cosmopolitan societies. Three main types of media articles about overweight dogs appeared during this period: 1) reports emphasizing facts and figures; 2) stories emphasizing personal prescriptions for dog owners, and 3) societal critiques. To help ordinary people make sense of canine obesity, media articles often highlight that dogs share the lifestyle of their human companion or owner, yet the implications of shared social and physical environments is rarely considered when it comes to solutions. Instead, media coverage exhorts people who share their lives with overweight dogs to 'own the problem' and, with resolve, to normalize their dog's physical condition by imposing dietary, exercise and relationship changes, thereby individualizing culpability rather than linking it to broader systemic issues. . And yet recent expressions of concern among researchers and in the media about the health effects of excess weight have not been confined to human populations, but also the increasing incidence of obesity amongst our co-habiting companion animals. In 2003, a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reported that one in four dogs and cats worldwide were overweight (National Research Council 2003), which helped to lend a pet angle to global media coverage of weight gain and obesity. Armed with this report and related findings (McGreevy, et al. 2005;Lund, Armstrong, Kirk and Klausner 2006), veterinary opinion leaders and animal welfare advocates have managed to harness media interest in obesity-in concert with their enduring fascination with matters animal-thus raising the public profile of an emerging pet health issue. This paper addresses the mass media's role in connecting weight gain in dogs with human activity and social organization. Following on from studies of the influence of comparative metaphors and analogies on lay-people's perceptions of human obesity (Barry, et al. 2009), its is likely that media portrayals of overweight pets have the potential to have an effect on the general public's understanding of and engagement with the determinants of health -in canine as well as in human populations. Pets and people -shared lives, shared environments, shared health concernsPet animals occupy an important place in many Western societies (Fr...

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