Forest condition and forest restoration as topics of online communication – An analysis of website performance of selected forest actors in Germany

In recent years, many actors in Germany claimed in debates how forests should be treated in future, e.g. by stating own positions, providing information, and offering participative actions like tree planting events or educational programs. However, also conflicting views and beliefs of different forest actor groups have become apparent in their communication, leading to e.g. fierce debates in TV and social media or protest campaigns against the forest sector. Although knowledge alone is not sufficient to solve conflicts and find consensus solutions, evidence-based knowledge would be beneficial for the course of such discussions as well as for good political decision making. Research so far has pointed out to a crucial need for information on the topics of forest condition and forest restoration. The increasing importance of online media suggests that a corresponding range of information should also be available online, e.g. on websites. Accordingly, this study focuses on websites as channels for direct-to-consumer communication and conducts a media analysis with special emphasis on (i) how much information on the topic is provided by different forest-related actors in Germany on their websites (content) and (ii) how well this information is adapted to the needs of the website users (performance). For website analysis, we refer to the concept of user experience (UX).

The UX of websites has been analyzed for 72 selected institutionalized forest actors, showing that there are clear differences in the UX. In tendency, actors of the interest mediation system operate websites with a better UX than most actors in public administration. Regarding performance, not all websites are sufficient to meet the requirements and needs of website users. Based on the processes of perception and assessment of websites such as proposed by Thielsch and Salaschek (2020; see Fig. 2), a poor performance will result in no or low attention and thus a worse perception of the website content. Regarding content, only very few websites of the investigated actors offer comprehensive information on forest condition and forest restoration. We therefore conclude that the extent of evidence-based information is not suitable to satisfy the need for information on these topics.