This research is breaking new ground by exploring how language and culture shape our interest in endangered species through geoinformatics and culturomics, a cutting-edge field that examines digital data trends.
“Linguistic and cultural backgrounds play a bigger role in biodiversity interest than we realize,” says Assistant Professor Ricardo Correia from the University of Turku, who leads the project. “Our goal is to better understand how these factors influence global biodiversity conservation priorities.”
"By taking advantage of emerging culturomics methods, we propose a new approach for mapping societal interest towards biodiversity by combining the species range maps with digital indicators of societal interest towards species derived from Wikipedia pageviews data for different languages." says Ricardo Correia. “We used IUCN Red Listed endangered terrestrial mammals as a case study, but our approach can be also applied to taxonomic groups, opening the way to understand interest towards those groups that gather less public interest”, Ricardo Correia reflects.
"While most mammal species are concentrated in biodiversity hotspots such as the Amazon region of South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, interest in endangered terrestrial mammal species varies significantly across linguistic and cultural regions," explains Mika Siljander, a docent in spatial modelling and a Kone Foundation grant researcher (HINGE-project) at the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science (HELICS), Department of Geoscience and Geography, University of Helsinki.
Siljander is the lead author of the recent study, titlted Language-specific hotspots of interest in IUCN Red Listed terrestrial mammals and published in the Journal of Maps. Reflecting on the project, he notes: "As a geographer specializing in geoinformatics, I found this project particularly rewarding. The main deliverable for the Journal of Maps wasn’t just a scientific paper but an accompanying map that required cutting-edge cartographic design. This presented both a satisfying challenge and an opportunity to innovate."
"Earlier, we have successfully used social media data to identify opportunities to support and threats to biodiversity conservation, but there is also great potential to use social media data to provide novel insights into mapping societal interest towards endangered species and to enhance biodiversity conservation", says Professor of Conservation Geography Enrico Di Minin, co-author in the article and leader of the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Science (HELICS) group at the University of Helsinki.
The study was developed as part of research projects funded by the Kone Foundation and the Research Council of Finland.
Contact:
Mika Siljander, mika.siljander@helsinki.fi
Enrico Di Minin, +358294150770, enrico.di.minin@helsinki.fi