Monsters, Monsters Everywhere - Lessons in Popular Culture Continued
Not surprisingly, one of my favourite topics in my Popular Culture class is monsters, and in particular zombies. Zombies are everywhere - Netflix, movie theatres, video games, books, comics. Heck, I even watched The Cured, a 2017 Irish horror film about reintegrating cured zombies into society after a plague swept across Europe, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day while I was in self-isolation this week… during a global, viral pandemic… that has swept its way across several continents… um, sh*t didn’t that happen in World War Z? Or was it I Am Legend? The Walking Dead?
*Breathe* I’m not a scientist, but I can pretty much guarantee that a zombie outbreak is not lurking around the corner. There are some eery similarities though, don’t you think?
These similarities go a long way to explaining why the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used zombies in their 2011 campaign about emergency preparedness. Capitalizing on the popularity and prevalence of zombies in American popular culture - The Walking Dead had been released only one year before - the CDC released a slew of products to teach new audiences, primarily younger audiences, about emergency preparedness. The CDC’s resources are still available and can be accessed by clicking here.
The CDC was not the first or the last to use zombies in their entertainment-education communications. Zombies have also been used as a tool for better understanding international relations, geography, microbiology, physics, and epidemiology, to name but a few. Despite its supposed popularity - the CDC’s website still proudly proclaims that “continue to reach and engage a wide variety of audiences on all hazards preparedness via ‘zombie preparedness’ - the effectiveness of their campaign has been called into question.
A 2015 study of a group of college students found that the campaign was “no more likely, and possibly even less likely” to help them retain the information or motivate them to prepare an emergency preparedness plan or kit.
Another study using a fictitious, humorous zombie themed scenario was found to be even less effective, likely because of the trivialized nature of the scenario.
A 2016 study of a zombie-based emergency preparedness exercise among elementary school children in rural Washington state found that the students focused on armament. Yes, guns. They included guns on their emergency kit list, even though firearms were not featured in any of the exercise’s material.
To investigate this further, Houghton et al. (2017) conducted a blind experiment - they recruited nearly 100 elementary school students between the ages of 9-12 and split them into small groups of 7 to 10. Students either took part in the natural disaster scenario or the zombie scenario: they watched a 3-minute video in a room decorated in posters according to their respective scenario (either natural disaster or zombies) and were then asked to list all of the items that should be included in their emergency kit. Students in the zombie room were exposed to the CDC poster (above) but at no time did material from either scenario feature or refer to firearms.
And… what did they find? Less than 5% of students in the natural disaster scenario listed firearms on their emergency preparedness kit but almost 75% of students in the zombie scenario included firearms in theirs.
Houghton et al (2017) argue that the lessons that we learn from popular culture - especially lessons from an established popular culture genre or trope - can result in the formation of preconceived ideas and, potentially, unintended consequences.
…I’ve read that many stores in Canada and the U.S. are running out of toilet paper, and now I’m wondering what the firearm supply is looking like down south.
If you’d like to read the full article by Houghton et al:
Houghton, Frank, et al. (2017). “Concerns With Entertainment-Education: Zombie Pandemic Preparedness and the Unanticipated Promotion of a Weapons Culture”, Health Education & Behaviour, Vol.44(4), pp.519-523.