Attention focused on pangolins (Pholidota) and the threats posed to their survival and welfare by international trade (for use in Chinese Traditional Medicine and the Asian wild meat market) has skyrocketed across all digital information platforms over the last decade. Previously obscure and often referred to as the ‘mammal you’ve never heard of’, pangolins are now widely recognised as an icon of the illegal wildlife trade. We document the events that led to the pangolins’ ‘rise to fame’, culminating in its Appendix I listing by CITES in September 2016 and a global commercial trade ban and explore temporal co-occurrence between events and peaks in media activity and public interest with the aim of identifying events (or types of events) that may have been influential in terms of awareness-raising. More broadly, our objective was to highlight lessons in public communication that might be applied to awareness campaigns for other lesser-known threatened species. We found no evidence that any particular type of event was more likely to generate a significant media/public response than any other, but peaks in public interest co-occurred with reports of pangolin seizures, highlighting the importance of news coverage of these incidents. Further, although neither editorial nor social media peaks were strongly correlated with the timing of events, they sometimes co-occurred with different events and each differed in their coverage of different types of events, suggesting that editorial and social media have independent and distinct roles to play in conservation communication. However, despite their iconic status, public interest in pangolins is still not equivalent to that directed at, for example, tigers, elephants or lions, so efforts need to be sustained. Finally, we note that, although attention can help to generate funds and influence policy, this alone will not be enough to achieve a favourable conservation status for pangolins – on-going and future work need to ensure that public enthusiasm for this species is translated into effective protection.

Awareness, Facebook, Google trends, news, wildlife trade

Public awareness of conservation and animal welfare issues at a global level can be hugely important in instigating, driving and supporting remedial action, largely through influences on policy change and funding (e.g. Lindemann-Matthies and Bose 2008, Tisdell 2006, Phillis et al. 2013, Wright et al. 2015). However, for some species, (particularly those not often seen in the wild, in zoos, sanctuaries or on television), the general public can be oblivious to the threats that they face. Ten years ago, this was true of pangolins for much of the public in the Western world (predominantly English-speaking countries in, for example, Europe and North America). Initially referred to in the media as the ‘mammal you’ve never heard of’ (e.g. Sutter 2014), pangolins are now widely portrayed as an icon of the illegal wildlife trade alongside the well-known ‘charismatic megafauna’ (elephants and rhinos) and their highly-publicised trade issues (poaching for ivory and rhino horn, respectively; e.g. Gao and Clark 2014, Haas and Ferreira 2016).

The precise mechanism underlying this ‘rise to fame’ is not well understood. Yet, whilst others have documented the conservation actions undertaken (e.g. Challender et al. 2012, 2014a, 2015, 2016) and the patterns of pangolin trade (e.g. Challender and Hywood 2012, Heinrich et al. 2016, 2017), there has been no comparable assessment of either the media or public response to this series of ‘events’. By ‘events’ we mean here an action or incident concerning, or relevant to, pangolins, their conservation or trade. Events might, therefore, include public education campaigns run by NGOs that are designed specifically to raise awareness, but also conservation actions (by, for example, governments, government agencies or inter-governmental organisations) and/or trade-related incidents (such as animals poached, products [animals or their parts] seized or poachers/traffickers arrested), either of which may be covered in the news and thus picked up (directly or via social media) by the general public. Conservation actions may also be publicised directly online via group websites and Facebook pages. Media and/or public attention to such events varies and is not always predictable, but can be considerable. For example, the killing of ‘Cecil the lion’ in Hwange National Park, Zimbabawe, in 2015, was mentioned in almost 12,000 news articles and over 87,000 social media posts in a single day, largely (but not entirely) due to ‘impassioned criticism’ of the event by a popular US TV talk show host, although Cecil was not the only lion to have been hunted in Hwange either before or after this event (Macdonald et al. 2016).

Understanding of the types of events that are likely to be influential or to generate considerable public interest, would allow more efficient targeting of sustained awareness-raising strategies specifically for pangolins and, more broadly, would have benefits for conservation marketing for other similar little-known species where greater public awareness of their threats might be helpful. As a first step in this process, here we document and quantify 12 years of pangolin trade-related events and associated media activity and public interest. We hypothesised that there would be an underlying increase in the activity of all types of media and in public interest, related to pangolins and their trade, over this period. However, our specific focus in this analysis was to identify peaks in activity/interest and to explore temporal correlations amongst them and amongst media peaks and peaks in public interest and the occurrence of events. Our aim was to identify events, or types of events, that generated or attracted most public or media interest. Ultimately, our objective was to identify general patterns that could be applied to awareness-raising strategies targeted at similarly little-known threatened animal species.

There are eight species of pangolin (Order Pholidota, also known as ‘scaly anteaters’) that collectively range across Asia (where there are four Manis spp.) and Africa (where there are two Phataginus spp. and two Smutsia spp.; Hassanin et al. 2015). All eight species are listed by CITES as Manis. All pangolin species are unique amongst mammals in being covered in keratin scales, and all are traded, domestically and internationally, for their scales and their meat (UNODC 2016). Pangolin meat is consumed in Africa and Asia, and is considered a delicacy in many parts of China where it is available in high-end restaurants and desired because it is rare, wild, expensive and illegal and because of the status that it is perceived to impart on consumers (Challender et al. 2015). Their scales are sought after for use in traditional medicine in both Africa (particularly West Africa, see Boakye et al. 2015) and Asia (see Zhou et al. 2014) for their perceived effects in treating a range of physical and spiritual conditions (Challender et al. 2015). Pangolins (body mass 2–33 kg, depending on the species) are solitary, nocturnal, insectivorous mammals that exist almost entirely on ants and termites that they eat with their elongated tongues (Macdonald et al. 2004). They occur at low population densities (estimates of 0.2–1.0 individuals per km², Mahmood et al. 2014, Pietersen et al. 2014a) and reproduce slowly (usually giving birth to a single young once a year (Mahmood et al. 2015, Zhang et al. 2016) – life history characteristics that render them vulnerable to overexploitation (e.g. Sodhi et al. 2009). Commercial trade in wild-caught Asian pangolins has been illegal since 2000 (under a CITES zero export quota, Challender et al. 2015) and is now illegal for all pangolin species. Nevertheless, illicit trade in the period 2000 to 2013 is estimated to have involved over a million individual pangolins (IUCN PSG 2016, Heinrich et al. 2017), most of which were destined for China and Vietnam (UNODC 2016). Of the four Asian species, the Chinese pangolin (M. pentadactyla) and the Sunda pangolin (M. javanica) are Critically Endangered, the two other Asian species are Endangered and the four African species are Vulnerable (IUCN 2018). Hunting and poaching for trade is considered the greatest threat to the survival of all pangolin species (Baillie et al. 2014, Challender et al. 2014b, c, Lagrada et al. 2014, Pietersen et al. 2014b, Waterman et al. 2014a, b, c).

To provide a context for the analysis, we first described broadly the chronology of events associated with pangolin conservation and trade, beginning with the formation of SavePangolins.org in 2007 and culminating, in September 2016, with the voting of parties at the CITES CoP 17 (Convention of International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Conference of Parties) to list all eight species of pangolin under Appendix I, thus affording them the highest level of protection under the treaty. We then quantified patterns and trends in the volume of social and editorial media activity related to pangolins and their trade and in relative public interest in pangolins generally, between 2005 and 2016 (covering two years prior to the first prominent event). To quantify relative public interest, we used Google Trends data, which provides a measure of relative Google search activity associated with a specified keyword. The use of Google Trends in this context is well-established (Proulx et al. 2014) and has been used to gauge public awareness and interest in a number of other conservation contexts (e.g. Do et al. 2014, Kim et al. 2014, Nghiem et al. 2016, Soriano-Redondo et al. 2016, Braczkowski et al. 2018). Finally, we used outlier detection in time series analysis to identify (1) monthly peaks in public interest, 2005–2016 and (2) daily peaks in social and editorial media activity and weekly peaks in public interest, 2015–2016 and, for both, assessed temporal co-occurrence amongst datasets and with events. For the latter, we focused specifically on the final two years because this was a period when both events and media activity appeared to be particularly intense. The difference in resolution between datasets was due to limitations associated with Google Trends data.

Between 2005 and 2016, alongside intensified efforts by NGOs, governments and scientists, interest in pangolins and in the threats posed by the international trade in their meat and scales, has undergone a significant increase in the editorial and social media and amongst global western audiences. In addition to underlying increasing trends, time series describing editorial and social media activity and GT were characterised by considerable fluctuations and clear peaks in activity. Whilst it was difficult to detect generalisable patterns for peaks in activity amongst datasets or between datasets and external events and bearing in mind that co-occurrence does not necessarily imply causation, our exploratory analysis revealed a number of potentially insightful observations.

First, although only a quarter of events were associated with a peak in either social or editorial media or public interest, there was no evidence that any particular type of event was more likely to generate a significant response than any other. This suggests that all types of events may have a role to play in increasing the public profile of conservation issues. Certainly, there are reasons for combining different types of events – for example, whilst conservation-themed ‘big screen’ animations can trigger considerable interest across a broad viewership, Yong et al. (2011) suggested that they are more effective when combined with supporting educational materials and campaigns.

For major seizures specifically, co-occurrence with peaks in media activity was low but ‘different’ seizures (see below) were associated with peaks in public interest and there was some evidence of time delays in media response. The only major seizure (of six recorded from 2015–2016) that co-occurred directly with a media peak (FB posts) was the largest scale seizure (7.3 tonnes) recorded in the EIA database at the time of this study; another, that appeared to be associated with a news peak with an 18-day time lag, involved 3.1 tonnes of pangolin scales but was widely reported in the news to be ‘China’s biggest ever pangolin scale seizure’ (see Table 1, 19 July and 10 December 2016, respectively). Between 2010 and 2015, there was a global increase in the weight of pangolin scale seizures and an increase in the proportion of large-quantity shipments of scales (Heinrich et al. 2017) and it is intuitive that successively larger seizures would continue to attract media attention, as each is reported to be ‘the largest ever’ (see e.g. AFP 2016). There has been no such increase in the size of seizures of whole pangolins (Heinrich et al. 2017), but peaks in public interest (at either weekly or monthly resolution) appeared to be associated with seizures of whole pangolins (alive or dead) and sometimes with seizures of whole pangolins that did not meet our a priori definition of a major seizure (see Table 1, Figs 2, 3). Although sample size was small, this suggests that seizures of whole pangolins attract attention amongst the general public (regardless of the numbers involved) and/or that there are other features of whole pangolin seizures that attract attention. With respect to the latter, we suspect that accompanying ‘shocking’ images (such as in the Medan warehouse raid; The Guardian 2015) may be key (see also Pinholster and Ham 2013; Papworth et al. 2015; Wu et al. 2018).

Second, only a quarter of the peaks in either social or editorial media activity clearly corresponded with an event. News articles and FB posts partly reflect public interest (e.g. Phillis et al. 2013), but news can also be agenda-driven (Papworth et al. 2015) and repeat-posters on FB, in this study, were predominantly professional or semi-professional organisations rather than individuals (see Suppl. material S1). Social and editorial media activity, thus, reflect the combined extent of scientific communication and advocacy, in addition to public response and are presumably driven by several factors, which may include, for example, organisational planning and schedules not necessarily related to external events. In contrast and notwithstanding differences in resolution, there was some evidence of slightly higher correspondence with events for GT. GT does not provide information on the opinion or motives of the interested public (Proulx et al. 2014), but it is considered a ‘valid tracker of public curiosity [sic]’ (Mccallum and Bury 2013). In this case, the relatively high correspondence between GT peaks and events (at least five of nine monthly GT peaks and at least three of five weekly GT peaks, see Fig. 2 and Table 1), together with an apparent association with seizures, highlights the importance of the news coverage of these types of incidents in raising awareness (see also Bolsen 2011, who found that news itself was driven more by real-world events than by messages supplied by advocacy groups or governments seeking to influence public discourse).

Third, whilst peaks in FB activity and news articles sometimes co-occurred, most often they did not. Co-occurrence between peaks in social and editorial media was sometimes, but not always, associated with a time lag of between one and seven days – but, whilst peaks in news articles sometimes appeared to lead peaks in social media, social media peaks preceded news peaks on an almost equal number of occasions. These apparently inconsistent observations presumably reflect the dual function of social media in both relaying news in the traditional editorial media (with some time lag) and creating news (Copeland 2011), as well as underlying differences in the types of events covered by editorial versus social media. Timing of peaks in public interest, similarly, differed from that of peaks in either news or social media activity, but overlapped (within the week in which GT data were collated) on different occasions with both. Social media is widely used as a news source (a recent YouGov survey found that over half of respondents from 36 countries get their news from social media sites; YouGov 2017), but editorial media still clearly has a role, independently of, and as a driver of, social media. Further, whilst social media peaks through 2016 were ten times in magnitude that of editorial media peaks over the same period, these extreme peaks in social media activity were not seen until 2016; whereas smaller, more frequent peaks in editorial media were seen throughout 2015 (Fig. 3), suggesting that social media activity, more generally, may, at least in part, have been a response to persistent news coverage. That public interest peaks independently of peaks in the media (but responds to events covered in the media) suggests that media content is more influential than the number of articles or posts produced (this is probably also true of FB posts posted in response to news articles).

In accordance with other studies of media attention surrounding high-profile events (e.g. the ‘climategate’ media event, Anderegg and Goldsmith 2014; and the shooting of Cecil the lion, Macdonald et al. 2016), the vast majority of peaks identified in media activity and were transient and, in this study, in most cases, had returned to former levels within a few days (GT could not be assessed at time scales less than a week). This short-lived nature observed in public interest is common (Downs 2018) and unsurprising since media coverage of events tends to be ephemeral (e.g. Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui 2009). There was some evidence of sustained higher levels of media activity following World Pangolin Day 2016 and the CITES CoP 17 meeting (also in 2016), but the gradual increase in public interest (as evidenced by GT) was not clearly related to any particular event.

Finally, it is noteworthy that, relative to other species, public interest in pangolins was still relatively low. GT for pangolins, relative to for example tigers, elephants or lions, were small (Fig. 4) and there was no evidence that any of the FB posts or YouTube videos described in key events, went viral (the precise definition of ‘viral’ is complex but usually involves > 1 million ‘likes’, comments and ‘shares’ or views, Rayson 2017). Maximum ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ recorded in this study for any one FB post were 36,000 and 3,500 (Suppl. material S1), respectively and the maximum views of any one YouTube video 34,000 (see Table 1).

Figure 4.

Google Trends (GT) for pangolins (green) compared with three large, well-known, ‘charismatic’ species – tigers (red), elephants (black) and lions (blue), 2005–2016. Data shown are relative search volume, where 100 represents the peak and all other values, for all species, are relative to the peak. Note the very low search volume for pangolins, relative to the other species; the highest relative search volume occurs in July 2015, coinciding with the shooting of Cecil the lion (Macdonald et al. 2016, see text).

The CITES Appendix I listing for pangolins and the trade ban were an important legal step. That there has been considerable global activity and attention directed at pangolins both proceeding and in response to this event is clear. However, seizures of ever increasing size continue to be reported – during the writing of this paper, 11.9 tonnes of pangolin scales were seized in Shenzhen, Hong Kong, on the 29^th November 2017 (IFAW 2017; this is larger than any of the seizures included in this analysis and represents the largest seizure yet reported). Efforts are now needed to translate the ban and associated enforcement into effective action and behaviour change on the ground (Challender and MacMillen 2014; Challender et al. 2015).

Insofar as public awareness can help drive these efforts, social media clearly can have considerable reach, but traditional editorial media is also needed and the two are not necessarily directly linked. Continued widespread coverage and reporting of pangolin seizures is probably paramount. The unpredictable nature of events (in terms of generating attention, remembering that not all events were specifically designed to raise awareness) raises a number of questions that warrant further study. For example, what is it about a conservation- or trade-related social media post that makes readers want, or feel the need to, share it? In the case that news leads social media, what influences journalists? How (via what media and what networks?) should the public be informed of inter-governmental and governmental actions? How influential (positive or negative) are celebrities (e.g. Duthie et al. 2017)? How important are powerful images (e.g. Wu et al. 2018)? These types of questions have relevance beyond pangolins (see e.g. Pearson et al. 2016; Wu et al. 2018), but high profile issues that have evolved over time (in terms of media and public interest), such as pangolin trade, will likely offer useful case studies.

Online science communication is complex. Propagation of messages, for example, depends on the susceptibility (as well as the influence) of individual members of social networks (Aral and Walker 2012) and comments (and the dynamics of online communication) can have a greater influence on a persons’ perception of a post or article than the content itself (Brossard and Scheufele 2013). We found (Suppl. material S1) that most (> 90%) social media posts actually attracted little attention (< 100 ‘likes’, < 10 comments) and that over 80% were unlikely to be ‘shared’; it may be that message spread is determined almost entirely by the poster (and the size of their social network) rather than by the actual content of the post (the ‘Kardashian effect’, see e.g. Hall 2014). Many of these ideas could be explored experimentally in a wildlife protection context and, in the current emerging field of conservation marketing (Wright et al. 2015; Verissimo and McKinley 2016), these types of studies will be increasingly relevant.

This study was funded by World Animal Protection. We are grateful to Rosie Salazar for collating Facebook data and Charlotte Davies (EIA) for providing and allowing us to use the Pangolin Crime Dataset.