2025
Otero, Pablo; Menéndez-Blázquez, Javier; March, David
Challenges of passive citizen science in ecology within a shifting social media landscape Journal Article
In: Ecological Informatics, vol. 90, pp. 103278, 2025, ISSN: 1574-9541.
@article{OTERO2025103278,
title = {Challenges of passive citizen science in ecology within a shifting social media landscape},
author = {Pablo Otero and Javier Menéndez-Blázquez and David March},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574954125002870},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2025.103278},
issn = {1574-9541},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-01-01},
urldate = {2025-01-01},
journal = {Ecological Informatics},
volume = {90},
pages = {103278},
abstract = {Effective conservation relies on comprehensive ecological data, including detailed species occurrences, to track distribution shifts, detect invasive species, and assess wildlife-human interactions. Despite recent technological advancements, environmental and biodiversity monitoring still faces financial and logistical limitations. Passive citizen science, which gathers data from social media platforms, provides a complementary approach that has proven effective in monitoring plants, insects, coral reefs, birds, recreational fishing, or marine pollution, among others. However, the rapid transformation of established social media platforms, the emergence of new distributed networks, and the rise of misinformation are reshaping the social media landscape and casting uncertainty on the future of this method. In this Viewpoint article, we review the current challenges of passive citizen science and call for strengthening this valuable approach for regional solutions that consider linguistic diversity, multiple data sources, fluctuating user engagement, and the integration of artificial intelligence tools for supervising and classifying images and text. At the policy level, a collaborative effort between platform providers and policymakers is essential to democratize research data access.},
keywords = {Biodiversity, Ecology, IOS4DOM, Passive citizen science, Social networks},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Effective conservation relies on comprehensive ecological data, including detailed species occurrences, to track distribution shifts, detect invasive species, and assess wildlife-human interactions. Despite recent technological advancements, environmental and biodiversity monitoring still faces financial and logistical limitations. Passive citizen science, which gathers data from social media platforms, provides a complementary approach that has proven effective in monitoring plants, insects, coral reefs, birds, recreational fishing, or marine pollution, among others. However, the rapid transformation of established social media platforms, the emergence of new distributed networks, and the rise of misinformation are reshaping the social media landscape and casting uncertainty on the future of this method. In this Viewpoint article, we review the current challenges of passive citizen science and call for strengthening this valuable approach for regional solutions that consider linguistic diversity, multiple data sources, fluctuating user engagement, and the integration of artificial intelligence tools for supervising and classifying images and text. At the policy level, a collaborative effort between platform providers and policymakers is essential to democratize research data access.
