Can a meme save a species?

Memes are everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter; the world of social media is bursting with amusing images embellished with a witty caption. Memes stay on the pulse of changing cultures and reflect social ideas and current events. But can they also help encourage the protection of species that don’t commonly garner media headlines?

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Getting the (Insta)Story on Ecotourism: Using Social Media to Determine Protected Area Visitation

Have you posted on social media today? If you did, you’re not alone. All around the world people are using social media apps, and many of these apps are recording data as we speak. Though this thought might seem a little overwhelming, all of this data makes for a wealth of information that scientists can use for research purposes. Over the past decade, social media has started to become a huge source of data for scientists. One study published in 2017 aimed to find out whether this social media data could help researchers determine what factors were most important to tourists when choosing to visit protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Tweet tweet: Using social media to help bird conservation

Conservation areas are vital to maintaining biodiversity, and as a result, it’s important to know which conversation areas humans are most likely to visit. Looking at publicly available social media data, researchers analyzed how many people posted on Twitter and Flickr in over 12,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas across the globe. Understanding how many people visit what areas is important for funding, and eco-tourism, but also to see which areas may have higher threats with so many visitors.

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