Effects of Climate Change on Wildlife

Images are often used in rhetorical situations to emphasize an argument in a way that words cannot.  For my topic, images and other visual representations can be used to help the audience see the problem at hand, not just read about it.  Here are examples of two photograph images and an explanatory animation that I could use in my documents. 

Image 1) Glacier sign

This image is of a sign at a glacier park in New Zealand that clearly depicts the dangers of the melting glaciers.  While it is not directly related to the wildlife aspect of my topic, it does say a lot about global warming.  This photo would probably be most effective in conjunction with a poster type presentation of my topic since it brings humor that will not fit in as well with the written documents I have so far.  I think it would show people the dangers of these melting glaciers, since it is obviously enough of a problem to have a sign posted about it.  However, I could see many people being distracted by the humorous aspect of the sign and questioning whether it is real or not.  I suppose if I include a statement on how the problem of melting glaciers is serious enough that there are danger signs for it, it would prove the validity of the photo as well as emphasizing the seriousness of the problem. 

 Visual 2) Polar bear animation from An Inconvenient Truth

If giving a presentation or making some sort of film about my topic, the polar bear animation from An Inconvenient Truth could be a valuable resource.  The animation depicts a polar bear swimming in the ocean and trying to rest upon some ice, which in turn breaks and melts because of increasing water temperatures.  The polar bear is forced to continue swimming with no foreseeable resting area in sight.  The use of the animation would be a simple way to demonstrate some of the problems I discuss in my writings about melting sea ice in the arctic.  Since the animation is so simple and direct, I don’t foresee there being too many problems that would arise from the audience.  If anything, I see a problem with the animation being so directed on one tiny aspect of the problem that perhaps the audience won’t understand the full effect. 

 Image 3) Icelandic Reindeer

This photo shows an image of an Icelandic Reindeer.  In my issue analysis, I briefly discuss reindeer and other similar animals and how they are suffering from malnutrition due to decreasing vegetation.  This photo could help to emphasize that point.  Personally, I feel like the reindeer looks awkwardly small, and there is little greenery, thus highlighting the lack of vegetation.  I see the most problems with this photo because the effectiveness of it is clearly based on the audience’s perception; it is not as clear-cut as the others.  Just because I think the lack of vegetation is apparent doesn’t mean my audience will view things the same way.  Perhaps if I had an explanatory caption, or made specific reference to the photo and its context in the accompanying document, the audience will view it the way I do.

The selections I read from the book “How to Write Powerful Press Releases” by Judith Welsh introduced me to the format of press releases, which I have had no experience with before.  The press releases that will be written should contain basic who, what, where, when, why information, but should also include more thought into what I want to get across to my audience.  So far, here are a few ideas I have for the project: 

1)  A press release introducing the blog/information/ “company”.  One of the reasons for sending a press release, as stated in the reading, is to promote a product.  If I were to start thinking of myself as running some sort of company, the first thing I would probably want to do is put my name out to the public.  Here I would want to address a wider audience than many of my pieces, perhaps to get more interest from related organizations.  I would have to think more about who I would want to address specifically though, as it would change the information I am sending. 

2)  A press release focusing on a specific current topic in my area of expertise.  If I find a recent article concerning global warming and wildlife, I could write a press release focused on educating the public on that current problem.  Again, this could be for a large audience since I am just generally educating with no real agenda other than perhaps spinning to topic to associate it with my work. 

3)  A press release announcing my plan to release my information as outlined in my previous projects.  This is perhaps the most thought out of my ideas so far.  In my memo and issue analysis, I have been discussing my audience as people visiting the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium.  In going along with this, if I were to be presenting my material there, in whatever form, it would seem logical to send out a press release announcing this.  This press release would be aimed specifically to people associated with my target audience, since I would want zoo visitors to be aware of my material being present there. 

The introduction of the press release project has really changed my whole outlook on this piece as a whole.  To imagine my writing as a plan for a fictional company to do actual (fictional) work really does change the entire tone of how I have been writing, both on this blog and in my assignments.  I am still unsure of how I will end up incorporating some of my ideas into my pieces, but I may be making some changes soon, so be on the lookout.

Here is a simple description of my project written in the A but B format:

A) Animals around the world are facing displacement and malnourishment due to the affects of global climate change but B) People are either unaware or unwilling to help alleviate the problem because they do not see the connection between the animals’ lives and their own.

The article, “Risk Communication, the West Nile Virus Epidemic, and Bioterrorism”, describes key features that are essential in producing an effective risk communication issue analysis.  These features are described in a highly technical manner, making the piece different than many of the other articles we have read thus far.  A main focus of the article is the need to be aware of your audience in order to get your point across.  We have discussed this importance very often in class, and the article gives more insight into this problem by presenting theoretical models of risk communication.  These models are as follows:

· The Risk Perception Model – where the audiences perception of what is being said greatly impacts their reaction to the information (often in a negative way)

· The Mental Noise Model – where the information leads the audience to be inundated with “mental noise”, a strong mental or emotional  reaction to the news that renders the audience unable to rationally act

· The Negative Dominance Model – where the negative aspects of a piece far outweigh the positive aspects

· The Trust Determination Model – where the audience’s reception of the information is greatly swayed based on the trustworthiness of the risk communicator

All of these models are very important in my work as a risk communicator.  Firstly, I will need to be aware of how the risks I discuss will be perceived by my audience.  As stated in the article, “When present, outrage factors take on strong moral and emotional overtones, predisposing an individual to react emotionally, which can, in turn, significantly amplify levels of perceived risk.”  While some outrage will be necessary in order to grab the audience’s attention, it is important to not stir the emotions of the audience too much or else they will be lost.  The Mental Noise and Negative Dominance Models will hopefully be easy to avoid by not laying out too much technical information and remembering to include positive messages in my piece.  Primarily, I will need to keep the Trust Determination Model in mind since this is one of the bigger problems for technical writers.  We often discuss in class how many people distrust scientific experts and large amounts of technical information.  The argument is summed up affectively in the article by saying, “Government officials, industry representatives, and scientists often complain that non-experts and lay people irrationally respond to risk information and do not accurately perceive and evaluate risk information^{(2, 19)}.  Representatives of citizen groups, worker groups, and individual citizens, in turn, often question the legitimacy of the risk assessment or risk management process”.  I hope that being aware of who my audience is and how they are thinking will help me break my technical writing habits and gain a certain amount of trust and credibility with my audience. 

The case studies used show both effective and ineffective examples of risk communication.  With the West Nile Virus situation, the proper people did their best in getting all the information they could to the public, but information was not clear and was over many people’s heads, leading to a “mental noise” problem.  The information in this case helps show how it is necessary to use visual aids such as charts and graphs to explain some of the more technical aspects of a risk.  The bioterrorism case study dealt mainly with the perceived risk, as many people would panic since the situation is not under their control.  Overall, I think the most important idea to take from this article is that the risk communicator needs to aware of the audience, how they might view your risk communication efforts, and how to alleviate their potential fears.

            The article “Introduction: Examining the Blog-Media Relationship” by Mark Tremayne briefly discusses the interaction between new, online forms of communication and traditional media outlets.  It begins by telling the story of a sixteen-year-old whose Myspace page entries caught outside attention and ended up being broadcast on national news.  Even though this story is only meant as an example to open an entire book on blogging, it is a good example of how quickly ideas can be spread on the internet.  This accessibility is something that worries me slightly about this blog; it will be necessary to double check the accuracy of anything I post because you never know who will see it.  What may initially seem to be a personal endeavor can very easily be seen by anyone throughout the world.

            The relationship between blogs and traditional media outlets is an ever changing one.  The article discusses examples of how bloggers have had major impacts on news stories from traditional outlets.  One such example was the infamous Dan Rather controversy where he ran a false story regarding the president’s military record.  It really proves the idea of the “wisdom of crowds” in that average people were able to unlock the falsities of the story, a story that was produced by a typically reliable traditional media source.  The article also shows how it is no longer necessary to be in the traditional media in order to have the “authority” to break news stories.  It is very similar situation to this blog since I have no expertise on global warming and wildlife, but the internet allows me to seem as if I do.

            The second article, “Blogging for Better Health: Putting the ‘Public’ Back in Public Health”, uses a sample of 47 mental health related blogs to determine some statistics about blogging.  In this sample, the majority of bloggers were young (percentages went down each decade from 20-30 to 50+) and female.  Most of these bloggers were the “patients”, the people personally afflicted by the health problems, and created their blogs in order to discuss their problems and potentially support others similarly troubled.  The results of this blogging were usually positive, connecting the bloggers with a discourse community through which they were comfortable sharing their stories.  Personally, I am quite fond of public health blogs and forums.  Just this week I have been having an allergic reaction to something, and in just a few minutes of Googling, I was able to discern that my reaction was from a shot I had just gotten at the doctors.  The increased availability of health information has been extremely effective in aiding the general public in diagnosing a multitude of problems.

            Overall, the discussion in this article had to do with personal, narrative-style blog, which is not really the same focus as this blog.  To a certain extent, there will be more personal responses to readings that follow this pattern, but it should be more of a formal setting than these mental-health blogs.  What is similar about the mental health blogs and this blog is the feeling that the blog brings a message that is not typically found in traditional media outlets.  For public health issues, people generally blog because they feel that there is something they can bring to the discourse community that has not been brought by typical means (doctors, experts, traditional media).  Similarly, the purpose of this project in risk communication has to do with presenting a problem in a new light, to a new audience, in a way that is not generally available.  Hopefully this blog will present an outlook on global warming that is different than what is traditionally heard in the media.