Twitter data analysis to assess the interest of citizens on the impact of marine plastic pollution

The plastic homes of hermit crabs in the Anthropocene

Plastic is the most pervasive element of marine waste, with harmful impact on wildlife. By using iEcology (i.e., internet Ecology, use of online data sources as a new tool in ecological research), we report on the emergence of a novel behaviour in hermit crabs related to the use of plastic or other anthropogenic materials as protective shells. We analysed images posted on social media to identify 386 individuals with artificial shells - mainly plastic caps (85 %). We report that 10 of the world's 16 terrestrial hermit crabs use artificial shells, a behaviour observed on all of the Earth's tropical coasts. Four non-exclusive mechanisms may drive individual choice for artificial shells: sexual signaling, lightness of artificial shells, odour cues, and camouflage in a polluted environment. Further research is needed to determine the impact of this behaviour on hermit crab evolutionary trajectories.

Assessing Brazilian protected areas through social media: Insights from 10 years of public interest and engagement

Social media platforms are a valuable source of data for investigating cultural and political trends related to public interest in nature and conservation. Here, we use the micro-blogging social network Twitter to explore trends in public interest in Brazilian protected areas (PAs). We identified ~400,000 Portuguese language tweets pertaining to all categories of Brazilian PAs over a ten-year period (1 January 2011-31 December 2020). We analysed the content of these tweets and calculated metrics of user engagement (likes and retweets) to uncover patterns and drivers of public interest in Brazilian PAs. Our results indicate that users / tweets mentioning PAs remained stable throughout the sample period. However, engagement with tweets grew steeply, particularly from 2018 onward and coinciding with a change in the Brazilian federal government. Furthermore, public interest was not evenly distributed across PAs; while national parks were the subject of the most tweets, mainly related to tourism activities, tweets related to conflicts among park users and managers were more likely to engage Twitter users. Our study highlights that automatic or semi-automatic monitoring of social media content and engagement has great potential as an early warning system to identify emerging conflicts and to generate data and metrics to support PA policy, governance and management.

Voting by mouth: media attention and environmental governance

External regulation is crucial for environmental protection. This study investigates the impact of media attention on corporate environmental governance from 2011 to 2021, using China's public companies as our samples. The empirical results indicate that media attention consistently and significantly enhances corporate environmental governance. This effect remains robust across endogeneity considerations and alternative tests. Additionally, in regions with higher marketization and stronger rule of law frameworks, the efficacy of media attention in improving corporate environmental performance becomes remarkably pronounced. Further analysis unveils that media attention positively impacts environmental governance by elevating public awareness, refining internal management efficiency, and fostering innovative strategies for minimizing environmental impact. These results offer empirical backing for the reinforcement of external oversight and corporate governance practices.

Strengthened public awareness of one health to prevent zoonosis spillover to humans

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced the world to rethink the interconnected health of humans and nature, i.e. One Health (OH). However, the current sector-technology-based solutions have a high cost. We propose a human-oriented One Health (HOH) concept to restrain the unsustainable behaviors of natural resource exploitation and consumption, which may trigger original zoonosis spillover from an imbalanced natural ecosystem. HOH can complement a nature-based solution (NBS), where the former refers to the unknown part of nature, while the latter is based on already known natural knowledge. Additionally, a systemic analysis of popular Chinese social media during the pandemic outbreak (January 1-March 31, 2020) revealed that the wide public was influenced by OH thought. In the post-pandemic era, it is time to deepen public awareness of HOH to guide the world onto a more sustainable track and prevent more serious zoonosis spillover in the future.

Twitterati on COVID-19 pandemic-environment linkage: Insights from mining one year of tweets

The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have had positive (although short-lived, e.g., reduction in pollution due to lockdown) as well as negative (e.g., increasing plastic pollution due to use of disposable masks, etc.) impacts on the environment. The pandemic-environment linkage also includes circumstances when regions experienced extreme weather events, such as floods and cyclones, and disaster management became challenging. This study aims to examine the trends in public discourses on Twitter on these interactions between the pandemic and environment. The present study follows the most recent literature on understanding public perceptions - which acknowledges Twitter to be an abundant source of information on public discussions on any global issue, including the pandemic. A Python-based code is developed to extract Twitter data spanning over a year, and analyze the presence of covid-environment related keywords and other attributes. It is found that the Twitterati aggressively viewed the impacts (such as economic slowdown and high mortality) of the pandemic as miniatures of the results of future climate change. The community was also highly concerned about the varying air and plastic pollution levels with the change in lockdown and covid prevention policies. Extreme weather events were a high-frequency topic when they impacted countries such as India, the USA, Australia, the Philippines and Vietnam. This study makes a novel attempt to provide an overview of public discourses on the pandemic-environment linkage and; can be a crucial addition to the literature on assessing public perception of environmental threats through Twitter data mining.

Fishing for litter for the reduction of marine plastic debris: What benefits and costs do Italians perceive?

As marine plastic litter (MPL) accumulates in the ocean, the need for remediation solutions, such as fishing for litter (FFL) schemes, is very crucial. In order to support the implementation of FFL schemes, the opinion of some Italians were sampled. The present study investigates Italians' opinions about the contribution of FFL in reducing MPL, and the perceived benefits and costs of the scheme. Descriptive statistics, test analyses and a logit regression were carried out. The key findings show a high sensitivity and concern toward MPL, and a good knowledge of FFL experiences. In Italians' opinion, potential FFL costs incurred by fishers should be mainly borne by public institutions. Considering FFL benefits, Italians have no doubts about the effectiveness of fishing for litter in reducing MPL. Female and coastal residence, FFL knowledge and concern about MPL positively affected the perceptions of FFL benefits, while education has a negative effect on the beneficial perceptions of FFL.

Microplastic sources, formation, toxicity and remediation: a review

Microplastic pollution is becoming a major issue for human health due to the recent discovery of microplastics in most ecosystems. Here, we review the sources, formation, occurrence, toxicity and remediation methods of microplastics. We distinguish ocean-based and land-based sources of microplastics. Microplastics have been found in biological samples such as faeces, sputum, saliva, blood and placenta. Cancer, intestinal, pulmonary, cardiovascular, infectious and inflammatory diseases are induced or mediated by microplastics. Microplastic exposure during pregnancy and maternal period is also discussed. Remediation methods include coagulation, membrane bioreactors, sand filtration, adsorption, photocatalytic degradation, electrocoagulation and magnetic separation. Control strategies comprise reducing plastic usage, behavioural change, and using biodegradable plastics. Global plastic production has risen dramatically over the past 70 years to reach 359 million tonnes. China is the world's top producer, contributing 17.5% to global production, while Turkey generates the most plastic waste in the Mediterranean region, at 144 tonnes per day. Microplastics comprise 75% of marine waste, with land-based sources responsible for 80-90% of pollution, while ocean-based sources account for only 10-20%. Microplastics induce toxic effects on humans and animals, such as cytotoxicity, immune response, oxidative stress, barrier attributes, and genotoxicity, even at minimal dosages of 10 μg/mL. Ingestion of microplastics by marine animals results in alterations in gastrointestinal tract physiology, immune system depression, oxidative stress, cytotoxicity, differential gene expression, and growth inhibition. Furthermore, bioaccumulation of microplastics in the tissues of aquatic organisms can have adverse effects on the aquatic ecosystem, with potential transmission of microplastics to humans and birds. Changing individual behaviours and governmental actions, such as implementing bans, taxes, or pricing on plastic carrier bags, has significantly reduced plastic consumption to 8-85% in various countries worldwide. The microplastic minimisation approach follows an upside-down pyramid, starting with prevention, followed by reducing, reusing, recycling, recovering, and ending with disposal as the least preferable option.

Plastic pollution induced by the COVID-19: Environmental challenges and outlook

The COVID-19 pandemic has also caused an environmental challenge, especially plastic pollution. This study is aimed to provide a systematic review of the current status and outlook of research on plastic pollution caused by the COVID-19 pandemic using a bibliometrics approach. The results indicate developed countries were the first to pay attention to the impact of plastics on the ocean and ecological environment during COVID-19 and conducted related research, and then developing countries followed up and started research. Research in developed countries is absolutely dominant in plastic pollution induced by the COVID-19, although the plastic pollution faced by developing countries is also very serious. The author's co-occurrence analysis shows the Matthew effect. Keyword clustering shows that plastics have a harsh chain-like impact on the ecological environment from land to ocean to atmosphere. The non-degradable components of plastic bring a serious impact the ocean ecosystems, and then pose a serious threat to the entire ecosystem environment.

Public attitudes toward the whole life cycle management of plastics: A text-mining study in China

Plastic pollution control, involving the whole life cycle management of plastic production, consumption, sorting, recycling, and disposal, has become necessary for global sustainable development. Research on public attitudes is vital to understanding whether plastic pollution control policies are being successfully implemented and the degree to which the public is involved. However, few studies have assessed public attitudes toward plastic pollution control from the whole life cycle perspective, especially using big data. Based on China's whole life cycle management policy of plastics, this study collected more than 200,000 relevant comments and user information from Sina Weibo to analyze and evaluate public attitudes and opinions toward plastic pollution control. Spatial-temporal analysis was conducted to discover the regional and temporal differences in public attention. Using a sentiment classification method based on semantic analysis, the emotional tendencies of the public attitudes toward ten subdivided plastic pollution control links were studied. It was found that more people held a positive attitude and paid more attention to reusing and sorting links, while the negative emotions were concentrated on the collection and sorting links. Using a topic modeling method, the negative opinions in various links were revealed, such as lack of supervision and industry standards; over packaging or insufficient packaging; food safety problems caused by the reuse; high costs, poor use and possibly greater waste of substitutes; unclear sorting rules and insufficient supporting measures. Graph theory was applied to display these opinions. Finally, some policy implications derived from the discussions are given.

How is People’s Awareness of “Biodiversity” Measured? Using Sentiment Analysis and LDA Topic Modeling in the Twitter Discourse Space from 2010 to 2020

The importance of biodiversity conservation is gradually being recognized worldwide, and 2020 was the final year of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets formulated at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10) in 2010. Unfortunately, the majority of the targets were assessed as unachievable. While it is essential to measure public awareness of biodiversity when setting the post-2020 targets, it is also a difficult task to propose a method to do so. This study provides a diachronic exploration of the discourse on “biodiversity” from 2010 to 2020, using Twitter posts, combined with sentiment analysis and topic modeling, commonly used in data science. Through the aggregation and comparison of n-grams, the visualization of eight types of emotional tendencies using the NRC emotion lexicon and supplemental comparison with the machine learning model, the construction of topic models using Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), and the qualitative analysis of tweet texts based on these models, the analysis and classification of these unstructured tweets have been performed effectively. The results revealed the evolution of words used with “biodiversity” on Twitter over the past decade, the emotional tendencies behind the contexts in which “biodiversity” has been used, and the approximate content of tweet texts that have constituted topics with distinctive characteristics. While searching for people’s awareness through SNS analysis still has many limitations, it is undeniable that essential suggestions can be obtained. To further refine the research method, it will be crucial to improve analysts’ skills, accumulate research examples, and advance data science.