New Article: Fisheries co-management in a digital age? An investigation of social media communications on the development of electronic monitoring for the Northeast U.S. groundfish fishery

Fisheries regulators have increasingly incorporated video monitoring systems, also known as electronic monitoring, into programs for fisheries data collection and documentation of bycatch. Electronic monitoring has recently emerged as one potential solution for fisheries monitoring and catch accounting in the Northeast United States, where fisheries regulators will soon require all commercial groundfish trips to be monitored either by electronic monitoring or human observers. Fisheries managers, scientists, and industry stakeholders have cooperated to some extent to solve some of the logistical and technical hurdles of electronic monitoring through recent pilot projects and coordination meetings. Whereas prior research has assessed the outcomes of stakeholder interactions in traditional venues (e.g., fisheries council meetings, workshops), we interrogated the dynamic connections between stakeholders in discussions about electronic monitoring policies and initiatives in the social media environment. Using social network and content analysis, we examined electronic monitoring-related discourse among Northeast U.S. fisheries stakeholders on Twitter over a period of 2 years. Read more about JPB Fellows Kirk Jalbert and Matthew Cutler research.