One Person’s Extinction is Another’s Evolution: Biodiversity in Online Discourse

• In Event: Online Political Discourse, Identity, and the Future of Democracy

Abstract

Public discourse through the media influences how people understand – and act on – global environmental issues. Most media conversations about environmental issues focus on climate change. Much less is about biodiversity. The degradation of global ecosystems and species extinction – examples of biodiversity – are major ecological crises facing the world today. This project explores: “What are the similarities and differences between the online discourse about biodiversity in China and the United States?”

This project employs frame and content analysis to compare conversations about biodiversity in
both the mainstream media and social media. Using the calendar year 2019, the initial research
provides a foundation through a frame analysis of national media sources in both countries.
Then we analyze data from social media platforms in each country: Weibo and in China and
Twitter in the United States, comparing the frames in the mainstream media to those of the
online media. China and the United States are interesting cases both because of the differences and the similarities. Each has differing government systems and, thus, responses to questions of
biodiversity. Yes, each has some citizen interest and institutional governmental infrastructure
to address these questions. The choice of Twitter and Weibo is simply that these are spaces in both countries for online discourse for which the data are available.

Biodiversity can mean many different things. So, in addition to the term biodiversity, we utilized the following search terms for each social media platform, based on 1) a review of previous research and the terms that they used; 2) a review of publications from science related think tanks; and 3) a review of news articles from traditional media. While not exhaustive, we are fairly confident that we can reach a lot of the discourse through these terms.

ecosystem degrad* ecosystems destroy
endangered species extinct species
wildlife extinction wildlife loss
loss of wildlife over hunting
overfishing trafficking + exotic animals
animal extinction animal loss

After extracting the data, we will analyze for two things. First, what words are being used to
describe biodiversity online. Second, what types of posters use what types of words. That is,
what are the sources of the different words and phrases: individuals or interest groups and, if
the latter, we will be able to match them to their ideological leanings.

Initial hypotheses are that the different communications ecosystems in the two countries communicate about environmental issues in both similar and different ways. While the frames in each country may differ, the mainstream media in both countries portray issues of biodiversity in complex and scientific ways, while the online media is much more populist and passionate.

Author

• Kenneth S. Rogerson, Duke University