Digital data sources and methods for conservation culturomics

Correia, Ricardo A.; Ladle, Richard J.; Jarić, Ivan; Malhado, Ana C. M.; Mittermeier, John C.; Roll, Uri; Soriano‐Redondo, Andrea; Veríssimo, Diogo; Fink, Christoph; Hausmann, Anna; Guedes-Santos, Jhonatan; Vardi, Reut; Minin, Enrico Di

doi:10.1111/cobi.13706

Cited by 75 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 87 publications

(195 reference statements)

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“…eBird users may be more likely to visit certain locations, report some species over others, and the coverage and types of users may differ between regions. It is also important to consider the ways in which people use Wikipedia as opposed to other online resources (Correia et al, 2021). Wikipedia pageviews reflect people's attention and their searches for additional knowledge, but not necessarily their preferences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Birds that are more commonly encountered in the wild attract higher public interest online

Mittermeier

Matthews

Correia

et al. 2021

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Large body size, the defining characteristic of "charismatic megafauna," is often viewed as the most significant correlate of higher public interest in species. However, common, local species (many of which are not large) can also generate public interest. We explored the relative importance of body size versus local occurrence in patterns of online interest in birds using a large sample of digital human-wildlife interactions (367 million Wikipedia pageviews) that included more than 10,000 bird species and a range of cultural and geographic contexts (represented by 25 Wikipedia language editions). We compared interest in Wikipedia, as measured by pageviews, with a bird's body size and its regional observation frequency (using data from eBird.org). We found that local species (i.e., those that occur in the wild in the country responsible for the majority of a Wikipedia language edition's pageviews) attract more pageviews than global species. Both body size and observation frequency had a positive correlation with Wikipedia pageviews across languages, but eBird observation frequency explained more of the variance in pageviews on average. In a model that included both observation frequency and body size, observation frequency was a significantly better predictor of pageviews than body size in 24 of 25 languages. Our results demonstrate that the opportunity to encounter birds in the wild is a significant correlate of increased online interest in birds across multiple linguistic and geographic contexts. This relationship provides insight into why some species attract greater interest than others and emphasizes the overlooked potential of common species in conservation marketing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, our findings highlighted the value of large-scale analyses across many species and over broad cultural and geographic contexts. Access to large digital sources such as Wikipedia, together with powerful new analytical tools hold much promise for further novel research insights using conservation culturomics (Correia et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birds that are more commonly encountered in the wild attract higher public interest online

Mittermeier

Matthews

Correia

et al. 2021

Conservat Sci and Prac

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“…Thus far, such investigations have involved analyzing seasonal patterns of interest in nature across species and cultures (Mittermeier et al 2019); examining relationship between measures of public interest and internet salience of protected areas (Correia et al 2018); and assessing the association between societal and research interests in taxonomic groups (Jaric et al 2019). Conservation culturomics has expanded to include a broader range of digital data sources, including user-generated information from social media (Correia et al 2021). Arguably, social media data represent the most comprehensive and widespread source of information about people and their interactions with nature that can be used to help address the biodiversity crisis (Di Minin et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to address data privacy concerns when using social media data in conservation science

Minin

Fink

Hausmann

et al. 2021

Conservation Biology

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Social media data are being increasingly used in conservation science to study human-nature interactions. User-generated content, such as images, video, text, and audio, and the associated metadata can be used to assess such interactions. A number of social media platforms provide free access to user-generated social media content. However, similar to any research involving people, scientific investigations based on social media data require compliance with highest standards of data privacy and data protection, even when data are publicly available. Should social media data be misused, the risks to individual users' privacy and well-being can be substantial. We investigated the legal basis for using social media data while ensuring data subjects' rights through a case study based on the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The risks associated with using social media data in research include accidental and purposeful misidentification that has the potential to cause psychological or physical harm to an identified person. To collect, store, protect, share, and manage social media data in a way that prevents potential risks to users involved, one should minimize data, anonymize data, and follow strict data management procedure. Risk-based approaches, such as a data privacy impact assessment, can be used to identify and minimize privacy risks to social media users, to demonstrate accountability and to comply with data protection legislation. We recommend that conservation scientists carefully consider our recommendations in devising their research objectives so as to facilitate responsible use of social media data in conservation science research, for example, in conservation culturomics and investigations of illegal wildlife trade online.

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“…For this, researchers have used data from diverse sources, such as social media platforms, digital encyclopedias, Figure 1. Summary attributes of a collection of 116 papers incorporating conservation culturomics approaches: (a) publication year (9 publications from early 2020 omitted), (b) main topic addressed, (c) taxa analyzed when the focus of the work was interest in species, and (d) corpora analyzed (see also Correia et al [2021]). See Appendix S1 for further details and Appendix S2 for the list of papers analyzed and their attributes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is methodological, by outlining and expanding the conservation culturomics toolbox. Correia et al (2021) provide an overview of the data sources and methods available for data collection and analysis and the challenges associated with this type of research. They also outline some of the upcoming challenges for this emerging research area.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%