Editorial for Special Issue of the Journal of Outdoor Tourism and Recreation on social media and other user created content for outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism research.

This editorial and the following fifteen papers in the special issue illustrate the diversity of ways that social media and other user created content online informs nature-based tourism including across countries, activities, and natural areas. The papers range from conceptual, broads scale and thematic to research assessing specific issues and locations within parks. The first paper sets the context by outlining the range of sources of user created big data, including from social media.