Browsing by Author "Redding, Alisa"

The sixth wave of mass species extinction currently threatens biodiversity and life on Earth as we know it. Conservationists seeking to protect threatened species are tasked with raising awareness and achieving funding for these protections, often by appealing to the public. In modern-day conservation research, digital data holds an increasingly important role in understanding conservation goals, messaging, and impacts. The media especially is a key player in disseminating information to the public about conservation. The data for this thesis was retrieved by an automated pipeline that collects Google News articles on species in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) (Di Minin & Kulkarni 2021). I used a descriptive approach to assess species information and popularity online, as well as the location and temporality of that information and popularity. I supplemented the dataset with metrics from Facebook to investigate article popularity, Google to investigate species popularity, and Wikipedia to investigate temporal trends in species interest. The quantitative results show an expected bias towards large, terrestrial mammals. Large cats are cited frequently across all data metrics. Popular headlines employ emotional or political language to attract readers. Frequently used words in titles of popular articles highlight diminishing populations, new or rare species, and certain species like whales, pangolins, rhinos, and turtles. The majority of the news organizations in the dataset are based in the United States. The United States is also most frequently mentioned in the text of the articles, though India and China lead with the highest number of species with native ranges in their countries. Wikipedia pageviews reveal the fluctuations in online species interest, and possible reasons are investigated through the article titles. The results reveal that charismatic, large mammals receive the highest attention in the media, and among the public. Results also showcase the potential of the pipeline and database for further development and addressing research gaps. Overall, the investigations in this thesis provide avenues to improve conservation messaging and address conservation biases.