The Influence of Media on Protecting Endangered Animals: A Case of Pandas in China

Abstract

This paper analyzes whether endangered animals can be protected through social media, and what factors influence people’s attention to endangered animal protection on social media. To answer these two questions, I compared the Baidu search index of giant pandas in the three-year period: 2019-2021 with the number of donations received by the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Foundation. The results showed that social media has effectively protected the giant pandas. I use retrospective content analysis to find 20 Weibo accounts by setting keywords and analyze Engagement metrics. It was found that “Specific animal” and “Knowledge-based” tend to increase the number of likes and comments, which can increase people’s attention to endangered animals on social media. However, the sample data for both studies were too small and may be disturbed the result. From a rigorous perspective, this study emphasizes the need to take into account the larger sample data and analyze the content of comments to better understand the user’s behavior intention.