Ethics and governance for internet‐based conservation science research

Thompson, Ruth; Hall, Jordan; Morrison, Chris; Palmer, Nicole; Roberts, David L.

doi:10.1111/cobi.13778

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In addition to ethical behavior towards users, the researchers must also ensure that they are following copyright and database laws of the selected digital corpus. Essentially, ethical conservation culturomics research should be conducted as non-deceptive, covert observations that ensures the privacy of individuals, complies with related laws, and does not misrepresent results [27].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation Culturomics: Potential Applications in South Asia

Kotera

Phillott

2022

AJEE

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Unsustainable human behavior has significantly contributed to the contemporary global biodiversity crisis. In order to mitigate this, it is crucial to study the underlying factors that have resulted in such behavior. Conservation culturomics is an emerging research method that uses digitally available data to gain insights on human-nature relationships at relevant spatial and temporal scales. This method also provides a cost-effective mechanism to inform people-centric conservation policy. Depending on the research question, the data collection and analysis can be tailored, taking advantage of recent advances in information technology. While it is most often applied to global studies, conservation culturomics can also be applied at a regional scale to gather vast volumes of data that represent context-specific human values towards nature. Examination of case studies from South Asia demonstrate the range of potential subjects that culturomics studies can examine, including marine megafauna (whales), avifauna (vultures), and habitats (wetlands). Conservation outcomes of culturomics research are broad, and can include: ecosystem services valuation to motivate habitat restoration, spatial and temporal variation in whale sightings to inform ecotourism guidelines and management, and public perceptions of vultures to inform awareness and outreach initiatives. The major impediments to conservation culturomics in regions such as South Asia are socio-economic biases among internet users and the need for sophisticated technological knowledge; however, with the increasing accessibility of the internet, this is set to change in the future.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation Culturomics: Potential Applications in South Asia

Kotera

Phillott

2022

AJEE

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“…We employed a covert observational approach using freely available online content posted by internet users for their own purposes. A covert observational approach was necessary because there are no practical means of obtaining free and prior informed consent for a study of this kind (Thompson et al, 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nomenclature in the online reptile trade

Lynn

Roberts

2022

Oryx

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The internet has expanded opportunities for wildlife traders to conduct business globally, but monitoring this activity is often challenging. As monitoring techniques frequently employ language-based searches for particular words, it is important to understand the language traders use, particularly the nomenclature used to refer to traded species. We recorded advert data from four UK websites, focusing on reptiles, which constitute a large proportion of the international pet trade. We analysed whether the language types used by advertisers to refer to individual reptiles were associated with certain trader characteristics. We found English common names were the most frequent name type used to refer to species, regardless of the geographical location of the seller and the CITES Appendix listing of the species. However, scientific names were recorded in twice as many adverts for threatened and Near Threatened species as in adverts for non-threatened species, and only scientific names were used for three families: Anguidae, Pseudaspididae and Sphaerodactylidae. These findings could inform the creation of tailored keyword detection tools, which must account for the numerous language types in use within online wildlife trade communities. Future studies should examine the nuances of language used by other online wildlife trader communities in other contexts, such as different online platforms or different languages. The ultimate aim of these language detection tools will be to track in detail trends in the online reptile trade, offering a better understanding of potentially unsustainable trade patterns and helping authorities to enforce laws against illegal online reptile trade.

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“…In a research context, participation in any activity should be voluntary, with no harm to participants, and any collected data kept anonymous and confidential (Babbie, 2013). Where free and informed consent may be impractical (e.g., online social media data), ensure ethical standards remain to avoid marginalising online communities (Thompson et al, 2021).…”

Section: Use Equitable Messages and Calls To Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%