Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL RHETORIC 0

How are Environmental Conservation Efforts Portrayed Rhetorically Through Social Media

Andrea Wormus

University of Central Florida

 How are Environmental Conservation Efforts Portrayed Rhetorically Through Social Media

While most people’s conception of the word “rhetoric” often consists of a surface level

analysis revolving around the speaker, Doug Downs defines the term as “[referring] to such

principles of meaning-making, and to the use of those principles in a given interaction.” (Downs

Citation). By focusing on this interaction through the writers specified lens, it allows the reader

to fully understand the work and the meaning behind it. As the state of the modern world

becomes more and more increasingly technological, forms of communication and techniques

used to draw in audiences have significantly shifted. Social media is now a prominent form of

instant communication and it provides an avenue for millions of people to globally discuss topics

affecting the world.

One specific topic that has been gaining popularity is the environmental state of the

planet. Natural disasters are constantly broadcasted and reports of the degrading environment

flood the news. However, campaigns advocating for environmental conservation find their home

on social media platforms. I wanted to research the relationship between environmentally

friendly movements and social media in terms of the different types of rhetoric, language, and

genres used to motivate their audiences.

While conducting my research, I noticed that a lot of my sources evaluated the effectiveness of

social media campaigns when it came to global issues such as global warming by looking at

students. Having a population of young people learn about environmental conservation acts and

campaigns is possibly one of the best ways to move towards a global change, and approaching

them in a genre that they already understand and utilize pretty much daily is the best approach to
learning. Therefore I agree with the approach these sources are taking and formed my research

question to be: In what ways do environmental conservation campaigns use different platforms

of social media and different types of rhetoric to promote their cause and educate young

audiences?

For three of my primary sources I planned on using multimodal text analysis to analyze

three different social media posts about environmental advocacy campaigns. By analyzing three

different posts on three different platforms I want to evaluate the effectiveness in terms of likes,

comments, and shares. For the social media platforms, I feel like the main three used for

spreading information are Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, therefore I want to take a specific

post from each and perform an analysis on it. I plan on finding a specific group/organization and

using their audience on each specified platform as the judge on whether or not they were

effective on that specific platform. Since each social media platform emphasizes a specific

genre/feature that they emphasize (Instagram = pictures, twitter = speed, facebook =

information), this will give me a good idea on which forms of rhetoric worked the best and

whether or not it was consistent with my sources.

For my last primary source I am thinking of conducting a survey among students who

double as social media users. With this I hope to answer some questions regarding the usefulness

of social media campaigns and whether the genre of social media was effective or not. Some of

the questions I plan on asking on my closed survey are:

1. What year are you in school?

2. Which social media platforms are you active on?

3. Have you heard of the arbor day foundation?

4. Are you familiar with the teamtrees campaign?

5. Do you follow the arbor day foundation / teamtrees hashtag?

6. How often do you see posts promoting environmental conservation?

7. How often do you share posts promoting environmental conservation?

 References

Cordero, E. (2012). THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE CLIMATE LITERACY:

The Green Ninja Project. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 93(12),

1813-1814. Retrieved February 10, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/26219359

Higgins, L., Wolf, M., & Torres, A. (2013). Opening the Doors to a Global Classroom: An

International Social Media Collaboration. NACTA Journal, 57(3a), 40-44. Retrieved

February 10, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/nactajournal.57.3a.40

Ripberger, J., Jenkins-Smith, H., Silva, C., Carlson, D., & Henderson, M. (2014). Social Media

and Severe Weather: Do Tweets Provide a Valid Indicator of Public Attention to Severe

Weather Risk Communication? Weather, Climate, and Society,6(4), 520-530. Retrieved

February 10, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24907404

Warner, A., Eames, C., & Irving, R. (2014). Using Social Media to Reinforce Environmental

Learning and Action-Taking for School Students. International Electronic Journal of

Environmental Education, 4(2), 83–96.

Doug Downs Citation - Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making

Ann M. Johns Citation - Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice

PLANNING

 Title - working title

 Background and rationale

o Brief contextualization of your research question

o Summary of work in the field

 Research questions

o Preliminary

 Research methodology

o Plan and timeline for conducting primary research