Natural history films generate more online interest in depicted species than in conservation messages

Abstract

The greatest crises of our time are environmental. To combat the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation will require the actions of all members of society. However, despite widespread consensus from the scientific community that human actions are driving this rapid environmental degradation, it remains unclear whether and to what extent the public is receiving and engaging with conservation messages. Natural history films have been suggested as one possible medium for generating awareness of conservation issues en masse but some environmental advocates have criticised these shows for lacking strong, focused conservation messaging. This study quantifies audience engagement with conservation themes and species depicted on screen in two BBC natural history super productions (Blue Planet II and Seven Worlds, One Planet) and a stand‐alone documentary with an explicit focus on conservation (Extinction: The Facts) by using big data analyses of Wikipedia page views during and after broadcast of each show and causal impact analysis. Our results indicate that natural history films are more effective at generating species awareness than transmitting conservation messages, but that audience engagement generated by conservation‐focused documentaries can be comparable to that generated by entire film series focused on natural history. With the ultimate goal of contributing to long‐term behavioural change, our results suggest that natural history films have the potential to drive mass audience engagement with conservation themes through better collaboration between filmmakers, conservationists and conservation messaging researchers. Finally, this study underscores how big data approaches can quantify the effectiveness of conservation messages across different mediums. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Impact on species' online attention when named after celebrities

“…However, comparing Wikipedia page views between celebrity and control species as an approach to gauge public attention has specific benefits. First, quantifying interest in conservation by analyzing trends in Wikipedia is a growing practice in the field of culturomics (see Millard et al., 2021; Mittermeier et al., 2021; Nolan et al., 2022; Roll et al., 2016), notably due to its abundance of articles on species that are freely accessible and standardized in structure (Mittermeier et al., 2021; Roll et al., 2016). A second advantage pertains to our decision to only examine species whose scientific names are etymologically related to celebrities.…”

“…To find Wikipedia pages for the control species and calculate statistics for each item (celebrities, celebrity species, and control species), we wrote a second Python script with pageviewapi (https://github.com/Commonists/pageview-api) and wikipediaapi (https://github.com/martin-majlis/Wikipedia-API) packages. We chose page views as a metric for public attention due to the frequent use of this approach in the field of culturomics and the advantages it provides for research (e.g., it is multilingual, open access, and attracts a vast audience [Millard et al., 2021; Mittermeier et al., 2021; Nolan et al., 2022; Roll et al., 2016]). Because all pages use a common naming scheme, these can be consistently formed by trimming extraneous whitespace around each item, replacing spaces with underscores, and capitalizing the first letter of the resultant string.…”

Using geotagged crowdsourced data to assess the diverse socio-cultural values of conservation areas: England as a case study

“…Wikipedia data have already been used to create metrics and indicators in a range of ways, and our approach of using geotagged pages within designated areas is cutting edge, capturing a broad range of spatial entities within designated areas that contribute to their value, from streams to stone circles. However, future work could develop indicators that make use of additional variables associated with the online encyclopaedia, such as page size (Wong and Rosindell 2021), page name (Chua et al 2021), page views (Nolan et al 2022), page edits, and the distribution of languages and users (Mittermeier et al 2021b).…”

Dead in the water: Mortality messaging in water crisis communication and implications for pro‐environmental outcomes

“…In 2021, the Media and Climate Change Observatory found the greatest climate change media discussion since these global conversations were first tracked in 2004 (Boykoff et al, 2022). While climate change media is most easily seen in nature documentary form (Nolan et al, 2022), climate communication now permeates pop culture, including music (Billie Eilish's song all the good girls go to hell [2019, track 5]), film (Adam McKay's Don't Look Up [McKay, 2021]) and video games (Nintendo's Animal Crossing [Fisher et al, 2021]). While climate change communication has received decades of substantial focus—see Yale's program on Climate Change Communication (est.…”