Abstract: Conservation of the organisms with bio-economic importance and those inhabiting human-dominated landscapes require an approach integrating scientific information with human dimensions. However, capturing the mindset and predicting behaviours of numerous stakeholders needs to be considered while developing and deploying such initiatives is a herculean task. The popularisation of the internet and social media, and the consequent accumulation of the enormous amount of information and personal opinions on digital spaces opened opportunities for researchers to get insights into not only the cultural trends and public interest related to different species but also the vital ecological information such as their geographical distribution, behaviour etc. Keeping the results of the studies focusing on videos of recreational angling of the iconic megafish Mahseer available on the popular social media platform YouTube, the present talk will elaborate on the potential of social media and internet data to provide insights into the range and distribution of mahseers in Indian rivers, presence of invasive alien fishes in their habitat, angler’s behaviours and public sentiment and emotion toward the angling of these fishes. Additionally, the potential role that ‘iEcology’ and ‘conservation culturomics’ could play in monitoring, management and conservation of various species and ecosystems will also be discussed.
About the speaker: Prantik Das is a CSIR Senior Research Fellow pursuing Ph.D. at The University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), Bangalore. He studies attitude, sentiment and behaviour of multiple stakeholders towards the threatened freshwater megafish, Mahseer.
Binoy is an Associate Professor at the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, NIAS Bangalore. He studies science communication ecosystems under the lens of cognitive science with the aim of developing effective strategies for promoting scientific temper in multicultural societies. His team also studies the determinants of behavioural and cognitive flexibility and behavioural deficiency in hatchery-reared juveniles of megafish Mahseers used in reintroduction and restocking programmes.