A new approach to monitoring the social environment for natural resource management and policy: The case of US national forest benefits and values

This paper describes a new approach for monitoring the social environment f or natural resource management and policy, based on content analysis of onl ine news media stories. Content analysis of the media has repeatedly been s hown to produce results that are closely correlated with attitude surveys a nd opinion polls. Computer methods were used to analyse almost 30 000 onlin e news stories about the US national forests for expressions of four broad categories of benefits and values. Recreation benefits and values were expr essed more often than other categories, both at the national and regional l evels, followed by commodity, ecological and moral/spiritual/aesthetic bene fits and values. Over the years 1992 through 1996, a gradual upward trend w as found in expressions of recreation and moral/spiritual/aesthetic benefit s and values and a gradual downward trend was found in expressions of commo dity-related benefits and values at the national level, suggesting shifting environmental values and the need to ensure that natural resource manageme nt and policy are responsive to changing social values. Computer content an alysis of online news stories provides a new method for the continuous moni toring and assessment of a broad range of trends in the social environment in which natural resource decision making takes place. (C) 1999 Academic Pr ess.