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Tracking Chinese newspaper coverage of elephant ivory through topic modeling |
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| Authors: | Yufang Gao Yuntian Liu Yu Luo Duan Biggs Weiyang Zhao Susan G Clark |
| Institution: | 1. School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA;2. Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA;3. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington, USA;4. School of Earth and Sustainability, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA Resilient Conservation, Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa;5. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China Institute of Ecology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China;6. School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, Jackson, Wyoming, USA |
| Abstract: | Mass media worldwide has contributed to increasing awareness of the illegal wildlife trade and its significant impact on wildlife conservation. We used mass media coverage as a proxy for macro-level public opinion to analyze the media framing of elephant ivory in 6394 Chinese newspaper articles published from 2000 to 2021 and thus determine the effects of wildlife policies on public opinion. We focused on 2 events: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) approval of China as a trading partner in the purchase and import of ivory stockpiles from Africa in July 2008 and the Chinese government's announcement of a domestic ivory ban in December 2016. Using latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling, we identified 8 topics about elephant ivory and grouped them into 3 frames: ivory arts and culture, ivory crimes, and elephant conservation. Over the last 2 decades, topics related to ivory crimes remained the most prevalent in news articles. Topics about ivory arts and culture showed a significant shift in media salience before and after the 2 events (from 0.44 to 0.19 and from 0.08 to 0.15, respectively, p < 0.05), whereas the other 2 frames did not change significantly. Contrary to popular belief, our results indicated that Chinese macro-level public opinion on ivory had become more negative following the CITES approval of ivory importation and less negative after the ivory ban announcement, at least for certain periods. The relationship between mass media, public opinion, and wildlife trade policies is complex and requires further examination of the sociopolitical dynamics that influence media narratives. Our results showed the value of topic modeling in monitoring and assessing media representations of wildlife issues in the era of big data. Conservationists should remain vigilant of mass media coverage and collaborate with media practitioners to produce comprehensive narratives on wildlife issues if resources permit. |
| Keywords: | China conservation management policy content analysis illegal wildlife trade latent Dirichlet allocation mass media análisis de contenido asignación latente de Dirichlet China medios masivos mercado ilegal de fauna políticas de gestión de la conservación 内容分析 非法野生动物贸易 隐含狄利克雷分布 大众传媒 |