Using Wikipedia to Measure Public Interest in Biodiversity and Conservation

The recent growth of online big data offers opportunities for rapid and inexpensive measurement of public interest. Conservation culturomics is an emerging research area that uses online data to study human-nature relationships for conservation. Methods for conservation culturomics, though promising, are still being developed and refined. We considered the potential of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as a resource for conservation culturomics and outlined methods for using Wikipedia data in conservation. Wikipedia's large size, widespread use, underlying data structure, and open access to both its content and usage analytics make it well suited to conservation culturomics research. Limitations of Wikipedia data include the lack of location information associated with some metadata and limited information on the motivations of many users. Seven methodological steps to consider when using Wikipedia data in conservation include metadata selection, temporality, taxonomy, language representation, Wikipedia geography, physical and biological geography, and comparative metrics. Each of these methodological decisions can affect measures of online interest. As a case study, we explored these themes by analyzing 757 million Wikipedia page views associated with the Wikipedia pages for 10,099 species of birds across 251 Wikipedia language editions. We found that Wikipedia data have the potential to generate insight for conservation and are particularly useful for quantifying patterns of public interest at large scales.