Lab Member Spotlight–Dr. Bennett publishes on the Tiger King Effect

Photo credit: Dr. Nikki E. Bennett. Photograph taken in 2011 while volunteering as an animal care technician at Carolina Tiger Rescue (Pittsboro, NC).

We have a wild update to our lab’s activities!

In 2021, Dr. Bennett published an analysis of social and news media responses to the docuseries Tiger King, exploring what these reactions could mean for big cat management in the United States. In her new publication, “Public Discourse on the Tiger King Second Season: An Analysis of Facebook Comments and Twitter Posts,” Dr. Bennett and colleagues discuss what the complete release of both seasons one and two had on the “Tiger King Effect.”

The Tiger King Effect was previously characterized as the series leading to changes in how big cats are managed in the US, driven by shifts in public perception following season one. With data now available from two distinct time points–season one release in 2020 and season two in 2021– this concept needed expansion. The updated definition accounts for the series’ global reach, as well as broader public discourse and policy considerations surrounding the big cat trade.

Highlights from Dr. Bennett’s recent paper includes that most social media discussions centered on the human characters depicted in the series. Discourse ranged from commentary on legal challenges that occurred after season one to expressions of negative–and at times sympathetic–affect towards those individuals. This meant relatively little comments or posts focused directly on animal welfare. This finding is surprising given the Big Cat Public Safety Act was passed in 2022, which would indicate public and political sentiment shifted to being more critical of big cat management (e.g., Who are appropriate caretakers of nontraditional exotic cats, like tigers?) after the docuseries’ release. But, at the same time, it isn’t surprising given the show used a style that framed big cat trade issues through the narratives of the people in the show, rather than animal-centered perspectives.

So, what does this mean for the realm of human-animal interactions? With the eventual passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, in which political interest was renewed in part due to the Tiger King docuseries, demonstrates that media–social, news, and entertainment–can be highly influential on animal welfare outcomes by maintaining visibility on important issues that lead to sociocultural changes.

Interested in learning more? You can access the article for free through Human-Animal Interactions open access: https://doi.org/10.1079/hai.2025.0053