Presentation cancelled by author
THAT'S THE PRESS, BABY! THE PRESS! BUT THERE'S SOMETHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. THE MANAGEMENT OF THE GREY SQUIRREL SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF THE MEDIA
(Oral)
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SEE PEER REVIEW
Eradication of introduced populations are key conservation tools to mitigate the impacts caused by established alien species. Although the scientific community widely agrees with the necessity to manage and control invasive species, the public opinion often may not support these projects, especially if the species have a strong appeal to the public. The public opinion could be affected by mass media, in particular when the audience has little experience with a particular issue (media-dependency hypothesis). A good communicative campaign could increase the acceptance of management activities and the probability of success, while a poor campaign may lead to more problems or even failures. In a media-saturated society the information reported by the press could be considered as an indicator of the public attitude. Consequently, this information may be used to evaluate the public opinion, and therefore the effectiveness of the communicative campaign performed by a project.
A media content analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, has been used to assess the effectiveness of the communication campaign of the European LIFE EC-SQUARE project on the management of the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) in North Italy (Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria regions). From 2011 to 2014, most of the information sources available to the public, such as newspapers, magazines, web news, were collected and analysed in searching the information concerning the project. Each piece of news was then classified adopting two techniques, the key words approach and the syntactic analysis approach, and allocated into three categories: 'favourable', 'neutral' and 'contrary' to the project.
A total of 166 news have been analysed, which correspond to a mean of one news every 8.8 days along the four years of the project. A higher interest of the media for the activities in Liguria (50% of the news) was probably connected to the management actions conducted in urban parks, where citizens used to feed the animals. The frequency values of the three categories were different between the three regions involved in the project (χ26 = 28.16, p < 0.05), with a higher frequency of negative articles in Liguria in respect to the other regions. Therefore, in Liguria the project encountered a greater initial opposition, despite the management solution proposed was based on the surgical sterilization of squirrels and not their live-trapping and euthanasia as in the other regions. However, the number of negative articles focused on Liguria decreased from March 2013 till the end of 2014 (F1,7 = 6.05, p < 0.05, R2 = 0.46), indicating an effect of the local communication campaign. In general, each frequency peak of newspaper articles against the project was followed by a peak of favourable news. Furthermore, during the project the trend was reversed, with peaks of positive articles, stimulated by the project, before a reaction of opponents to the projects generating.