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. This research represents the initial phase of a multi-year study on co-management aspects of decision-making in Northeast U.S. federally managed fisheries. Our initial findings revealed that environmental NGOs and federal science agency organizations drive the discourse on electronic monitoring, but information-sharing between environmental NGOs, government, and industry as a form of cooperation appears to take shape with some fishing industry and community organizations joining the conversation. These preliminary results suggest that cross-stakeholder communications are prevalent, but expanding discursive networks will be necessary in realizing diverse participation in cooperative fisheries projects, particularly those aimed at implementing new approaches to fisheries science and management, as in the case of electronic monitoring for the Northeast groundfish fishery.