School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Conserv Biol. 2023 Oct;37(5):e14072. doi: 10.1111/cobi.14072. Epub 2023 Apr 10.
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.
全球大众媒体提高了人们对非法野生动植物贸易及其对野生动植物保护的重大影响的认识。我们使用大众媒体报道作为宏观层面公众意见的代表，分析了 2000 年至 2021 年期间中国 6394 篇报纸文章中关于象牙的媒体报道框架，从而确定野生动物政策对公众意见的影响。我们关注了 2 个事件：2008 年 7 月，《濒危野生动植物种国际贸易公约》（CITES）批准中国成为从非洲购买和进口象牙库存的贸易伙伴，以及中国政府于 2016 年 12 月宣布国内象牙禁令。我们使用潜在狄利克雷分配主题建模，确定了 8 个关于象牙的主题，并将其分为 3 个框架：象牙艺术和文化、象牙犯罪和大象保护。在过去的 20 年中，与象牙犯罪相关的主题在新闻文章中仍然最为普遍。在这两个事件之前和之后，关于象牙艺术和文化的主题在媒体中的显著度发生了显著变化（分别从 0.44 变为 0.19 和从 0.08 变为 0.15，p<0.05），而其他两个框架则没有明显变化。与普遍看法相反，我们的结果表明，在中国批准进口象牙之后，中国对象牙的宏观公众意见变得更加消极，而在宣布象牙禁令之后，至少在某些时期，中国对象牙的宏观公众意见变得不那么消极。大众媒体、公众意见和野生动植物贸易政策之间的关系是复杂的，需要进一步研究影响媒体叙事的社会政治动态。我们的结果表明，在大数据时代，主题建模在监测和评估媒体对野生动物问题的代表性方面具有价值。如果资源允许，自然资源保护主义者应密切关注大众媒体报道，并与媒体从业者合作，就野生动物问题制作全面的报道。
