Katie Boyce

LIB 680
Final Analysis


Analysis of the River Safety PSE Video

River Safety This title on the webpage of Sequoia and Kings Canyon
located under Park Video summarizes the anticipated audience and desired
outcome of the video labeled River Safety. The target audience is the visitors
to the Sequoia and Kings Canyon. The desired outcome is given on the
webpage, as As short public announcement on river safety in Sequoia and
Kings Canyon National Parks The goal is to teach incoming visitors about river
safety just incase if they end up close to the river in any way.
The benefit to cost theory states that for communication to occur your
target audience must be willing to engage with and process the information.
Wilbur Schram had the idea of Fraction of Selection, which means that the
probability of involvement equals the promise of a reward or potential effort.
Within this video the benefit is low and the cost is high. As soon as the park
ranger starts to speak with his loud voice you realize he is speaking so loud due
to the rushing water behind him that he has to speak over. The audience/visitors
are likely to bypass the park ranger and look at the water pictures because that is
what is the loudest.
You will also notice that you might lose attention towards the park ranger due to
his eye contact being shaded by his hat. This makes it difficult to make eye
contact with the speaker when his eyes are completely covered by a black
shadow. The video also shows a very quick poster that displays information
about the Deadly River while the park ranger is talking about not drinking and
swimming. The benefit to having this poster displayed is very low due to how
quickly it is displayed on the video. It also shows Spanish writing on the poster
that tends to be large. This makes your eyes go directly to the large Spanish
writing that some people may not be able to read. The cost of having this portion
in the video is high. People cannot read the poster in 2 seconds, thus making it
impossible for them to see what it says or means.
At the end of the video it shows a clip for visitors to find out more
information for the park with a website and phone number. The way it is
displayed with a black background, large white lettering and the length of the clip
helps make the benefit high and cost low within this particular portion of the
video.

The cognitive load theory is the amount of information a human is trying to
process in working memory at any one time. In the video of river safety the
cognitive load is high. The cognitive effort that it takes to listen to the park ranger
is a high cost. He tends to speak quickly and loudly along with the clips changing
at a fast pase, making it difficult to see the visuals and hear what he is saying all
at the same time.
It is also difficult to see how the visuals relate to what the park ranger is saying. I
say this because the visuals are just showing a steady flow of water, but no
person within the picture to relate to the drowning aspect. In order to make it
easier for the viewer to see the correlation between the visual and the verbal
channel might include a person pretending to jump off the rocks into the water to
correlate the two. This could help to make the cognitive effort easier on the
viewer. It takes the thinking out of why there are loud ragging rapids and how
they relate to river safety and drowning.
Also the loud sound of the river makes it difficult to concentrate to what he
is saying. Thus, the audience is more likely to either have to watch the video a
second time or turn away within the first few seconds. There is a need to
eliminate the extraneous load because then the visitors or viewers are more
likely to pay attention, listen, and watch the video. If the park ranger did not
speak so loud and maybe found a different place to do the talking in this video
then the cognitive load could be lower. The water is way too loud and it makes
the park ranger speak loud which could cause a visitor to not watch the whole
video. The images that are presented on the video, somewhat have to do with
what the park ranger is talking about. It seems as though instead of showing
pictures of the water and its rapids you should show a cartoon version of a
person drowning or falling into water. When they show the green pasture with
the water, they could have added an actual human standing in the shallow
portion of the water.

New information is processed according to how it fits into these rules,
called schema. These schemas can be used not only to interpret but also to
predict situation occurring in our environment (Widmayer). The schema in the
video tends to be adapted more towards adults versus children.
A small child might not know the meaning of the word drowning, slippery
rocks or swift current, but most adults have a built in schema to where they
already have an idea behind the meanings of these words, thus they are more
than likely to want to continue to listen and watch the video because they
understand it. A child with little knowledge of the main words used in the video
might not understand the meaning of the video. The visuals within the video
shows no correlation between the words spoken and what are shown in the
picture, in turn would be difficult for a child to understand because the images
shown have little to do with river safety or staying away from these areas
because you may drown.
In Schema theory you want to make sure to use visuals and verbal
expressions that are understandable for any type of audience member. If you
dont then it will cause a communication gap between the audience member and
the National Park communities. The schemata should be composed for anyone
to understand, not geared towards one type of audience member to enable more
viewers to be able to participate.

Social Judgment Theory is how relevant something is to you in your
personal world. If a couple with no children plan to visit the Sequoia and Kings
Canyon, with the intention of walking around and sitting and listening to the water
then they are more likely to want to bypass the video of river safety because it
does not pertain to what they plan to do. It is simply not relevant to them. Now,
if a family of 4 with children want to visit and walk around the park and observe
the water rapids, the canyon, and maybe swim in calm water, then they are more
likely to want to watch the video with their children so that they are all aware of
the dangers of the rapid waters and possible drowning.
Even though the video is geared towards adults, children can still watch it and
then the parents can elaborate on what the meaning of the video was. This will
then make the video relevant for the children. If a child watches the video
without an adult, I can see how they may become very confused as to what the
video is trying to express because of its fast pase nature and content.

Anything a person knows about the world is cognition. When individuals
become aware that two cognitions are dissonant they will feel a state of
discomfort know as dissonance. The extent of this discomfort will depend on
how important the cognitions are (Trenholm). The fact that there are two people
sitting on a rock behind the park ranger shows a cognitive irrelevance and it
relates to the two cognitions being dissonant. With that being said, the people
sitting on the rock sunbathing tend to have nothing to do with what the park
ranger is speaking about on river safety. This makes these two cognitions
dissonant and irrelevant for this video.

The Dual Coding Theory suggests that the human mind operates with two
distinct classes of mental representation (or codes), verbal representations and
mental images, and that human memory thus comprises two functionally
independent (although interacting) systems or stores, verbal memory and image
memory. What is being spoken in the river safety video does not match the
visual information completely. The park ranger talks about how the water in the
park has caused deaths due to drowning and wants to warn visitors of the
dangers of the water in the area. With that being said, in the video you are
shown a visual of the rapid water, but nothing that shows a person almost
drowning, or pretending to drown. A good way to help make this child friendly is
for the creators to share a cartoon clip showing how a person can drown in a
funny or kid friendly type of way.
Another aspect to be aware of is that, as the park ranger begins to speak,
you begin to notice how loud his voice is and then you hear the sound of loud
rapid water, which tends to overtake the park ranger spoken words, which makes
it difficult to concentrate on what the park ranger is saying. Thus, focusing more
on the visuals rather than the verbal information.
It is possible that by the first 60 seconds of watching the video the viewer
could get overwhelmed and decide to move on and not watch the whole video
due to the overpowering sound of the water, which makes it difficult to hear what
is being spoken because your attention automatically goes to the ostentatious
water.

Works Cited
Widmayer, S.A. (2002). Schema Theory: An Introduction. George
Mason University.
Trenholm (date unknown) Creating Contradiction: Cognitive
Consistency. (Books distributor unknown).