Social Management Networks: Analysis of Postings in Facebook Groups Related to Wildlife Mangement and Prospects for Data Collection

Rapid acceptance and development of social network applications provide opportunities to gather data at low costs and to allow for coordinated use of this information for management. The phrase “social management networks” is proposed to focus study on social networks used for management objectives. This paper examines frequency of postings on Facebook groups related to wildlife management in order to see how this application is being developed to support these social management networks. Also, a survey of college business students is analyzed to see how social networking applications might be used to support environmental scanning using surveys. The results suggest that many social management networks have only modest or little success, but there are some significant successes. Postings in Facebook groups tend to be linearly related to group size, except when very large groups are also considered. Online surveys significantly increase participation compared to mailed surveys as measured by intended participation rates. Adding Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter support can marginally improve participation rates for an online survey.