Using social media to assess nature-based tourism in Africa

Nature-based tourism is popular with millions of people visiting protected areas in eastern and southern Africa to view wildlife. To improve on their experiences while conserving natural resources, and increasing social and economic benefits, it is important to obtain information about who visits, where, when and why as well as how they feel about their experiences and their and others’ perceptions about national parks. Obtaining such information can be difficult especially across multiple destinations, over time and for different wildlife species. With billions of people sharing user created content online, it is possible to obtain relevant information for tourism monitoring from social media, including from the image sharing platform Flickr and the microblogging platform Twitter. But how could data from these platforms be used to better monitor wildlife tourism including in South Africa? This thesis expands on the currently sparse research for Africa to explore how social media can be used to assess nature-based tourism, including wildlife tourism in South Africa, and key issues for protected area management. [...]