Analysis of the Capacity of Google Trends to Measure Interest in Conservation Topics and the Role of Online News.

Le T P Nghiem,Felix K S Lim,Luis R Carrasco,Sarah K Papworth,Zhong-Ke Gao

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0152802

Le T P Nghiem, Felix K S Lim + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152802

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Abstract

With the continuous growth of internet usage, Google Trends has emerged as a source of information to investigate how social trends evolve over time. Knowing how the level of interest in conservation topics—approximated using Google search volume—varies over time can help support targeted conservation science communication. However, the evolution of search volume over time and the mechanisms that drive peaks in searches are poorly understood. We conducted time series analyses on Google search data from 2004 to 2013 to investigate: (i) whether interests in selected conservation topics have declined and (ii) the effect of news reporting and academic publishing on search volume. Although trends were sensitive to the term used as benchmark, we did not find that public interest towards conservation topics such as climate change, ecosystem services, deforestation, orangutan, invasive species and habitat loss was declining. We found, however, a robust downward trend for endangered species and an upward trend for ecosystem services. The quantity of news articles was related to patterns in Google search volume, whereas the number of research articles was not a good predictor but lagged behind Google search volume, indicating the role of news in the transfer of conservation science to the public.

Highlights

Support from the public is often a prerequisite for conservation success [1, 2], understanding the dynamics of public interest is crucial for effective conservation initiatives
When love was the benchmark, we found significant trends for all topics except for orangutan and deforestation, of which only ecosystem services exhibited an upward trend (Table 1, Fig 1)
When life was the benchmark, we found significant trends for five topics: orangutan, ecosystem services, and deforestation exhibited an upward trend while endangered species and habitat loss exhibited downward trends

Summary

Introduction

Support from the public is often a prerequisite for conservation success [1, 2], understanding the dynamics of public interest is crucial for effective conservation initiatives. Public surveys have been used to gauge levels of awareness or support from the public towards environmental causes Internet usage has emerged as an extensive source of data to investigate public trends. Some examples are the use of social media as an indicator of public interest in environmental topics [5], public health outcomes [6] and the use of Google search volume to predict economic trends [7] and disease outbreaks [8]. Online data from Google have become a valuable source for analysis as Google is the most popular search engine globally (Google constituted over 65% of the global online search share in 2012 [9]).

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