Social media as a means of understanding park visitors: an evaluation of user-generated content related to two low use, remote national parks

Abstract

Using two remote and sparsely visited backcountry and wilderness areas in Alaska as a case study, this manuscript evaluates data from one season of online user-generated content. Social media posts from Twitter and Flickr were collected, coded for content, and mapped where geographic data was available. The resulting dataset was assessed for its quality, and results were compared with visitor use information reported by commercial use operators. Overall, out of 4,008 users in the dataset, 223 were on-site visitors to one or both parks, and 144 visited the backcountry. Social media content overrepresented wildlife viewing behaviors, and very little spatial data emerged. User-generated content in the study of very remote wilderness may have some application for managers, but the entire volume of related user-generate content may not represent on-site visitors, especially on Twitter. More research is needed to understand limitations in application of publicly available social media data.