NDLI: Is interest toward the environment really declining? The complexity of analysing trends using internet search data

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Ficetola, Gentile Francesco
Copyright Year	2013
Abstract	Recent analyses of internet search volume hypothesized a decline of public interest toward themes related to environment, biodiversity conservation and fishery. These analyses were based on Google Trends, which is a measure of how frequently a term is searched in Google, in proportion to the total of searches performed. Google Trends is a measure of relative search, and this may make difficult assessing temporal trends. I evaluated whether relative declines in internet search volumes represent genuine decline in interest toward environmental-related themes, by comparing trends of terms representing various themes, including environment, computer science, other disciplines (astrophysics) and leisure. Similar values of relative decline were detected for environmental terms, for computer science terms, and for other scientific disciplines. Conversely, an increase was observed for leisure related terms. This suggests that interest toward the environment is not truly decreasing. The apparent decline of environmental and scientific terms is most likely caused by the increasing use of internet for aims unrelated to science and technology, such as leisure. Internet search tools are a powerful source of information, but users should be aware of the complexity of analysing their data: using unrelated terms as benchmark may help to identify genuine trends.
Starting Page	2983
Ending Page	2988
Page Count	6
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09603115
Journal	Biodiversity and Conservation
Volume Number	22
Issue Number	12
e-ISSN	15729710
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2013-08-27
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Climate change Environment Google trends Public opinion Sustainability Time series Evolutionary Biology Plant Sciences Tree Biology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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