Dataset Information

Public Perceptions of Aquaculture: Evaluating Spatiotemporal Patterns of Sentiment around the World.

ABSTRACT: Aquaculture is developing rapidly at a global scale and sustainable practices are an essential part of meeting the protein requirements of the ballooning human population. Locating aquaculture offshore is one strategy that may help address some issues related to nearshore development. However, offshore production is nascent and distinctions between the types of aquatic farming may not be fully understood by the public-important for collaboration, research, and development. Here we evaluate and report, to our knowledge, the first multinational quantification of the relative sentiments and opinions of the public around distinct forms of aquaculture. Using thousands of newspaper headlines (Ntotal = 1,596) from developed (no. countries = 26) and developing (42) nations, ranging over periods of 1984 to 2015, we found an expanding positive trend of general 'aquaculture' coverage, while 'marine' and 'offshore' appeared more negative. Overall, developing regions published proportionally more positive than negative headlines than developed countries. As case studies, government collected public comments (Ntotal = 1,585) from the United States of America (USA) and New Zealand mirrored the media sentiments; offshore perception being particularly negative in the USA. We also found public sentiment may be influenced by local environmental disasters not directly related to aquaculture (e.g., oil spills). Both countries voiced concern over environmental impacts, but the concerns tended to be more generalized, rather than targeted issues. Two factors that could be inhibiting informed discussion and decisions about offshore aquaculture are lack of applicable knowledge and actual local development issues. Better communication and investigation of the real versus perceived impacts of aquaculture could aid in clarifying the debate about aquaculture, and help support future sustainable growth.

SUBMITTER: Froehlich HE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5207524 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Public Perceptions of Aquaculture: Evaluating Spatiotemporal Patterns of Sentiment around the World.

Froehlich Halley E HE Gentry Rebecca R RR Rust Michael B MB Grimm Dietmar D Halpern Benjamin S BS

PloS one 20170103 1

Aquaculture is developing rapidly at a global scale and sustainable practices are an essential part of meeting the protein requirements of the ballooning human population. Locating aquaculture offshore is one strategy that may help address some issues related to nearshore development. However, offshore production is nascent and distinctions between the types of aquatic farming may not be fully understood by the public-important for collaboration, research, and development. Here we evaluate and r ...[more]

PMID: 28046057

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Project description:We have analysed the COVID-19 epidemic data of more than 174 countries (excluding China) in the period between 22 January and 28 March 2020. We found that some countries (such as the USA, the UK and Canada) follow an exponential epidemic growth, while others (like Italy and several other European countries) show a power law like growth. Regardless of the best fitting law, many countries can be shown to follow a common trajectory that is similar to Italy (the epicentre at the time of analysis), but with varying degrees of delay. We found that countries with 'younger' epidemics, i.e. countries where the epidemic started more recently, tend to exhibit more exponential like behaviour, while countries that were closer behind Italy tend to follow a power law growth. We hypothesize that there is a universal growth pattern of this infection that starts off as exponential and subsequently becomes more power law like. Although it cannot be excluded that this growth pattern is a consequence of social distancing measures, an alternative explanation is that it is an intrinsic epidemic growth law, dictated by a spatially distributed community structure, where the growth in individual highly mixed communities is exponential but the longer term, local geographical spread (in the absence of global mixing) results in a power law. This is supported by computer simulations of a metapopulation model that gives rise to predictions about the growth dynamics that are consistent with correlations found in the epidemiological data. Therefore, seeing a deviation from straight exponential growth may be a natural progression of the epidemic in each country. On the practical side, this indicates that (i) even in the absence of strict social distancing interventions, exponential growth is not an accurate predictor of longer term infection spread, and (ii) a deviation from exponential spread and a reduction of estimated doubling times do not necessarily indicate successful interventions, which are instead indicated by a transition to a reduced power or by a deviation from power law behaviour.

Dataset Information

Public Perceptions of Aquaculture: Evaluating Spatiotemporal Patterns of Sentiment around the World.

Publications

Public Perceptions of Aquaculture: Evaluating Spatiotemporal Patterns of Sentiment around the World.

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