Blacklists do not necessarily make people curious about invasive alien species. A case study with Bayesian structural time series and Wikipedia searches about invasive mammals in Italy

Abstract

Blacklists of invasive alien species (IAS) are a popular tool for managing and preventing biological invasions. Moreover, blacklists also have the potential to make the general public more curious about biological invasions, usually by benefiting from media coverage and providing accessible examples of IAS. We have tested if the implementation of the first List of IAS of Union concern by the European Union increased visits to Wikipedia pages on invasive alien mammals in Italy. We adopted causal impact analysis to quantify changes in the overall volume of visits to pages about invasive alien mammals that appeared on the list, by using pages about native mammals as a control. Following the publication of the first Union list, there was no increase in the amount of visits to Wikipedia pages on invasive mammals, regardless of their inclusion in the Union list. Rather, visits to Wikipedia were irregular in time, coinciding with media coverage of single, charismatic species. Our results indicate that important policymaking initiatives do not necessarily increase curiosity about biological invasions, even when they are covered by generalist media and are relatively easy to understand. We would therefore emphasise that policymaking initiatives should be coupled with adequate communication campaigns and should adopt communication guidelines for generalist media.

Developing Students’ Scientific Literacy through Wikipedia Digital Library

“…It can be concluded that Wikipedia digital library still requires supervision from the teacher. Because without a teacher as a facilitator, the Wikipedia digital library will not be optimally used as a reference by students in seeking scientific information [21]. The next finding from Figure 4 is a significant change between before and after treatment in students' scientific literacy skills.…”

“…Wikipedia is widely used in learning activities. Initially, many doubted the quality of Wikipedia's content and allegations of misinformation, so several institutions prohibited teachers and students from using Wikipedia [7], [9], [10]. However, this assumption is gradually changing because Wikipedia is supported by millions of editors and moderators of multi-sourced content [11], [12].…”

Air Traffic Demand Forecasting with a Bayesian Structural Time Series Approach

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Combining surveys and on-line searching volumes to analyze public awareness about invasive alien species: a case study with the invasive Asian yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina) in Italy

“…On the other hand, at a time where the Internet is becoming a primary source of information worldwide, many studies showed that a growing number of people search on the Internet for those topics they are curious about, or have heard about, from various sources of information. Therefore, the analysis of online searching volumes on search engines and Wikipedia could become a valuable tool to measure public interest towards political (Mellon 2013(Mellon , 2014 as well as environmental issues (Nghiem et al 2016;Burivalova et al 2018), including biological invasions Cerri et al 2022). In this study, we aimed to show that it is possible to combine questionnaire-based surveys with the analysis of Internet searching volumes to draw conclusions about the awareness of stakeholders and the general public on invasive alien species by considering the case of the invasive Asian yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina Lepeletier, 1836) in Italy.…”