CALS502 – Assignment #4
For Assignment 3 I wrote an article aimed at Canadian adults, specifically parents and expectant parents, who could be defined as ‘Concerned’ according to the Global Warming’s Six Americas research report: those who acknowledge the seriousness of the climate crisis but are not actively addressing it (Leiserowitz, Maibach & Roser-Renouf, 2009). Using a narrative storytelling approach, I wrote two fictional first-person narratives – one told from the perspective of the reader’s child 25 years in the future, the other a present-day story told by someone in the Global South having lived through climate-related disasters (with an accompanying video). My objective was to inspire my audience to be more concerned and engaged in climate change activism and in advocating for the rights of Global South communities.
For Assignment 4, my audience is Canadian youth. For my first communications piece, I created an audio recording to be used as a writing exercise prompt in high school classrooms; for my second communications piece, I created an Instagram Post using the same content but in a written/visual format. Although the audience within a high school classroom and on Instagram includes young people representing a range of attitudes and beliefs around climate change, I was particularly focused on those who could be classified as ‘Alarmed’ according to Leiserowitz, Maibach & Roser-Renouf’s report (2009). According to a study involving 10,000 youth in 10 countries, the majority of youth are exceedingly worried about climate change, with almost half of the study’s respondents describing “feelings of fear and worry (about climate change affecting) their ability to function” (Pruitt-Young, 2021). As with Assignment 3, my goal is to elicit my audience’s engagement in climate change activism and in advocating for the rights of citizens in the Global South. I am also continuing with the use of storytelling. However, with the aforementioned youth mental health crisis in mind, I wanted to take a very different approach than I had used for the ‘Concerned’ adults of my previous assignment. Stevenson and Peterson found in their research that adolescents’ levels of engagement in climate change efforts were adversely affected by feelings of despair, but that feelings of concern and even more significantly of hope were powerful motivators for action within this age group (2016). With this in mind, I framed these two pieces with much more optimism, hoping to bolster my audience’s mental resilience and sense of agency while continuing to highlight the realities of citizens in the Global South. The storytelling approach is also being utilized differently with this audience; I thought that encouraging the youth to write their own future stories would have much more potential for empowerment. The hopeful frame for both pieces is inspired and influenced by Part 1 of The Future Earth – A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming (Holthaus, 2020). Other influences include Hayhoe’s assertion that talking about climate change with those around us is one of the most powerful tools for change (2019). References to the realities of Global South communities are drawn from the IPCC’s Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018), while reference to the sixth mass extinction event is tied to the findings of Ceballos, Dirzo and Ehrlich (2017).
The audio recording for classroom use and the Instagram post provide different options for experiencing the content based on a variety of accessibility considerations as well as audience preferences. In their Design for Diversity™(D4D) framework, Project Inkblot propose the question “Who might you be excluding?” as a path to identifying individuals who may not have access to the products or services you’re crafting (2019). Since the audio recording is being offered as a high school teaching tool, Project Inkblot’s question prompted me to consider accessibility barriers for teenagers who have fallen out of the traditional high school system or who have already graduated. In addition to this consideration, the Instagram Post included Alt-text for those using visual assistive technology. As well, the Instagram post’s images of foliage and various green nature close-ups were chosen to provide a calming visual experience for those suffering from anxiety (London Image Institute, 2020). The audio recording, meanwhile, is accompanied by a transcript for those who are either unable to benefit from the audio option or who are more comfortable reading the text-based version (Rallo et al., 2019). As well, the absence of background noise or any layered sounds in the audio recording was an accessibility consideration for those who have difficulty distinguishing between sounds (Rallo et al., 2019, p. 11).
References:
Ceballos, G.; Dirzo, R. & Ehrlich, P.E. (2017). Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089
Hayhoe, K. (2019). The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it. TED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BvcToPZCLI&t=14s
Holthaus, E. (2020). The Future Earth – A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming. [book] HarperOne.
Leiserowitz, A.; Maibach, E.; & Roser-Renouf, C. (2009). Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/global-warmings-six-americas-2009/
London Image Institute (2020). Color Psychology: How Do Colors Affect Mood & Emotions? London Image Institute. https://londonimageinstitute.com/how-to-empower-yourself-with-color-psychology/
Masson-Delmotte, V.; Zhai, P.; Pörtner, H.O.; Roberts, D.; Skea, J.; Shukla, P.R.; Pirani, A.; Moufouma-Okia, W.; Péan, C.; Pidcock, R.; Connors, S.; Matthews, J.B.R; Chen, Y.; Zhou, X.; Gomis, M.I.; Lonnoy, E.; Maycock, T.; Tignor, M.; Waterfield, T. (Eds.) (2018). IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers. In: Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. World Meteorological Organization. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
Project Inkblot (2019). How to begin designing for diversity. The Creative Independent. https://thecreativeindependent.com/guides/how-to-begin-designing-for-diversity/?ref=ksr_tci
Pruitt-Young, S. (2021). Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change And Say Governments Are Failing Them. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/14/1037023551/climate-change-children-young-adults-anxious-worried-study
Rallo, A., Forest, E., Kuo, J., Boutilier, R., & Li, E. (2019). Access Ability 2: A practical handbook on accessible graphic design. Revised + Supersized Second Edition. The Association of Registered Graphic Designers. https://www.rgd.ca/database/files/library/RGD_AccessAbility2_Handbook_2019_06_01(1).pdf
Stevenson, K., & Peterson, N. (2016). Motivating action through fostering climate change hope and concern and avoiding despair among adolescents. Sustainability, 8(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/su8010006