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https://theconversation.com/elephant-conservation-may-be-undermined-by-twitter-users-who-overlook-main-threats-191788>
"The African forest elephant (
Loxodonta cyclotis), the African savanna
elephant (
Loxodonta africana) and the Asian elephant (
Elephas maximus) are
all highly threatened species. The International Union for Conservation of
Nature has identified poaching, habitat loss, and human-elephant conflict as
threats common to the species.
Addressing threats to elephants requires public and political will to take
action. As elephant conservation relies on international funders, elephant
conservation requires support from people within elephant-range countries along
with people around the world. For example, from 2010 to 2017, international
donors provided US$500 million towards anti-poaching programmes across Africa.
What the public believes to be the primary threats to elephants has an impact
on how conservation issues are prioritised and funded. But public views are
informed by the media’s coverage of conservation threats.
Social media’s reach has helped to bring attention to elephant conservation
globally. But if attention on social media is not aligned with the primary
threats to elephants, public support – and therefore political will and funding
– may be misdirected towards issues and campaigns that don’t benefit wild
elephants.
In our new study, we analysed tweets about elephants posted during 2019 to
understand whether the most pressing threats – as identified by International
Union for Conservation of Nature – received the most attention.
We found that attention on Twitter did not align with the most pressing
threats. Habitat loss and human-elephant conflict received relatively little
attention.
The study also highlighted a difference between people who lived in countries
that had elephant populations, and those that didn’t. Conflict between
elephants and humans was an important issue for people living in countries with
elephants. But it got little attention from people who didn’t live in areas
that had elephants.
Habitat loss received little attention from all Twitter users (less than 1% of
all tweets about elephants).
Our findings are concerning as the lack of attention for habitat loss and
human-elephant conflict may result in these issues being perceived as less
important and, therefore, less likely to receive funding and attention from
policy-makers."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
