Abstract
Overlooked for much of the nation’s history by most, the state of urban wildlife and their relationships with humans have gained unprecedented attention. Catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there are three interlinked reasons for such attention. First, travel restrictions and social distancing measures meant that almost all residents in Singapore were home-bound, prompting them to seek recreation in nature reserves and parks– places which sans pandemic have had to vie for the attention of numerous other possibilities for recreation such as malls, theatres, museums, and the like. Second, news outlets began setting a noticeable editorial agenda that focussed attention on the benefits of physical activities in nature, shedding light on wildlife biodiversity that would have otherwise been neglected before. News stories during this period not only exalted certain charismatic species over others, it also reported on increased human-animal encounters that involved instances of conflicts, transgressions, or peaceful co-existence. This leads to the third reason for increased media attention, where more encounters with wildlife catalysed a precedence for an uptick on debates about human-wildlife relations via social media platforms by users. This resulted in a compounding of interest in the benefits as well as problems of increased contact and sharing space with urban wildlife between encounters, coverage, and reader interest. Therefore, this paper investigates the framing of urban wildlife during this unique circumstance through Critical Discourse Analysis of digitally published headlines from two mainstream media outlets on new stories about otters and boars. The findings suggest a double-standard treatment where one species is framed as more favourable through anthropomorphic semantic classifications, revealing the reproduction of humans’ speciesist dispositions towards urban wildlife hidden in the specific linguistic construction of headlines.