Save the Bay Personal Reflective Analysis
When the Save the Bay team visited our class in February, Director of Communications, Cindy Sabato, presented several options for areas with which that they were seeking help. She explained that their goal was to partner with student teams to better raise awareness of critical topics through public communications campaigns. Some of the core areas of focus she mentioned were salt marshes, nutrients and nutrient pollution, watersheds, seawalls, and microplastics. While all of these topics were of interest to me, one stood out from all of the rest: microplastics. I chose this topic because as part of the extensive volunteer and intern experience I have had at the New England Aquarium in, I was exposed to the Rozalia Project, an organization focused on the problem of marine debris in urban and coastal waters; specifically with their microplastics projects. After the class visit, I learned that my friend, Tory Stoddard, also had an interest in microplastics and we agreed to work together. For our project, we proposed to deliver a communications campaign for the Save the Bay organization, focused on microplastics and their environmental and legislative impact. To increase the relevance of our message we highlighted the direct impact microplastics have on the waterways of Rhode Island and Narragansett Bay. To make our campaign more effective, we concentrated our research on the impact of three specific types of microplastics: beads, fragments, and fibers that are less than five millimeters long. Once we presented our proposal to Save the Bay and received their feedback, we then began the research phase of our project. I found this part of the process to be particularly valuable as we were able to learn from many experts and resources. We had several stretch goals for this part of the project related to who we could get access to and meet with, and it was gratifying when we were able to achieve those goals. We conducted several expert interviews with individuals who have been directly involved in studying and addressing the impact of microplastics on our oceans. The first of these was with Mike Jarbeau, Baymaster, at Save the Bay. Mike helped us to understand the local impact of microplastics and what was being done to remedy the situation. The second interview was with Professor Cieri Lews, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, UK who was very good at helping us to better understand the sources of microplastics and their effect on the food chain. Our third interview was with Rachael Miller, executive director of the Rozalia Project and strategic partner to the team at the University of Exeter, UK that is working most closely with the issue of ecotoxicology. Ms. Miller shared details of her research in the areas of microplastics in local waterways. Each of these people was generous with their time and the resources that they sent to us as follow up. While this phase took significant time, I felt that it was the most valuable part of the process. To better understand the legislative landscape, we did extensive research that showed that there is an increasing trend against plastic products gaining momentum based on concerns about climate change and global pollution. We learned that because plastic is made from crude oil and natural gases, but does not emit any greenhouse gas many politicians and climate change activists have overlooked plastic as a significant issue. But, more and more people realize that plastic is the single greatest contributor to the pollution of our waterways and our marine environments. Here in Rhode Island, we found that Rhode Island legislators are currently considering two bills: one is a statewide plastic bag ban, and the other is a ban on plastic water bottles and polystyrene (Styrofoam). We also learned that some Rhode Island towns have already implemented bag bans including Barrington, Block Island, Bristol, Jamestown, Middletown, Newport, and Portsmouth. In addition to local legislative activity, we researched to better understand more about other state and federal efforts in this area and confirmed that other states including California and Hawaii have statewide bans on plastic bags and hundreds of municipal bans have passed across the country. Once we finished this research, completed our interviews, and reviewed all of the materials that our experts had shared with us, we took the time to do a thorough analysis of the popular media and social media landscape. We also took a close look at how Save the Bay was currently leveraging social media to communicate their core messages. Our analysis showed that they had visually engaging posts with a good variety of content, format, and calls to action. It also showed that there was strong support from partners in cross-linking and promotion and a significant opportunity for the organization to increase engagement and leverage partners to create ambassadors to help boost engagement. Following this step in the process, we defined the core elements of the campaign that we would create including the following communications assets for use by Save the Bay:
We had periodic check-ins with our professor and he provided feedback that we were making good progress. However, we were given a red-light indicator at this stage of the project to warn us that we needed to stay focused on delivering a cohesive campaign. He also suggested that we rely less heavily on data and statistics to make it all approachable and more effective and not let all of the messy logistics of coordination with our interviews and recordings get in the way of our goal. We took this feedback very seriously and did a major rewrite on all of our campaign elements to ensure that we were telling a cohesive story and that it was both approachable and easy to understand. We also sought peer feedback from others in the class as those that were in the Writing Center. This part of the process proved to be very valuable in guiding our next steps. We asked our peers the following questions: What specific writing techniques do you think we could stand to use more of? What writing techniques did we execute well/not well and how could we improve our usage of those? Do you feel that our writing was easily understood and engaging why/why not? Do you have any suggestions for our social media posts? Their responses validated the use of rhetorical devices including logos and ethos in our introduction and our blog posts and we got positive feedback on our podcast storyboard as well. One item that was very meaningful in the peer feedback was their acknowledgment that our research must have been "complex and lengthy" to tell the story as cohesively as we did. This and their validation of our approach t using sound clips from different experts and researchers to give our own arguments a stronger foundation helped keep us going through what felt like a very long part of the process. It seemed to take us a long time for it to all come together as we had much to coordinate and make sense of, but the feedback from the professor and our peers helped us to solidify our approach with greater confidence. Being able to accept this feedback and leverage it in our work was a valuable learning outcome for us in the project. This, along with understanding the importance of leveraging rhetorical techniques to strengthen our arguments, adding clarity to our writing allowed us to be more effective communicators by understanding our discourse community. It also allowed us to convince our readers of the validity of our statements in the short form content involved in the blog and social media posts which were very important. An additional learning outcome came from considering Jack Selzer's "Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers." In it Selzer made a case for doing a rhetorical analysis to help us to understand better a writer's intent to persuade, convince or influence an audience through word selection, tone, and purpose. Some critical questions to consider when analyzing a piece of writing are: What is the goal of the writer's article? Is it a persuasive argument? Does the writer establish credibility and seem trustworthy? And what emotional aspects does the writer use to be more influential? These learning outcomes were all valuable as we considered our blog post, podcast script and all of the final deliverables of the project. In the end, we were able to not only successfully develop all of the assets previously mentioned, but we also created a robust set of recommendations for Save the Bay to consider as they advanced their communications efforts. Our research and analysis, as well as our personal use and experience with social media, informed these recommendations. We learned that while challenging, we would not have been as effective if we hadn't taken the time we did to go through that part of the process.
0 Comments
|