Environmental Communication Fall 2021

  https://stopbuyingtrash.wixsite.com/stopbuyingtrash stopbuyingtrash is a web project intended to communicate the need to rethink our habits as the consumers of the world. Changing these habits is a project I’ve believed in for years and a goal I have set for myself in my own life, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to spread the message. I had originally intended to publicly project images and videos drawing attention to the issue with a link to the site on the walls of high-traffic areas around my campus, but found that I lacked the appropriate hardware to do so. Instead I shared the site via a campus-wide email, and it has now been visited several dozen times. I hope those who have visited the site have found it helpful in changing their perspective on consumption, but communication from site viewers to me is rather limited. Web design is not my strong suit, so I was not able to include all the features I wanted at first, such as an anticonsumpt...

  Noise Pollution  By Christin Toth   This semester I decided to do my environmental communication final project on marine noise pollution. In cities we talk about noise and light pollution, how there is none when you go out into the countryside. However, many of us do not stop and think that noise pollution exists underwater as well. Unfortunately, there is, and it is a big problem.     The expected silent blue abyss is shattered by the loud blasts of compressed air from seismic surveys and the constant shrill of boats. These are the two culprits I focused on. My project goal was to educate people on how these two things are causing harm to marine life. As well as get 50 people to sign petitions against seismic surveying.  I made five flyers all talking about the negative effects noise pollution has on whales, fish, and the fishing industry to accompany that I collected sound samples of different noise polluters and how th...

       In this communication project, we used social media, specifically Instagram, to try to raise awareness for some of the dangers currently facing Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) , particularly the oil drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain. As a way to measure the effectiveness of the Instagram page, we decided to make 50 followers and 100 total likes on the posts our goal as an estimate of the page’s visibility and public interest. In terms of project materials, each group member crafted at least two posts on the page, each focusing on a different aspect of the refuge, in addition to several story posts (now located in the account’s highlights section) in between to maintain the public’s interest throughout the duration of the project. Some of these posts were infographics we made ourselves after conducting some research on the ANWR, and several story posts contain links to outside websites to encourage public engagement in the page, coupled...

  Photo by Tampa Bay Times This is an actual image of the wastewater at Piney Point being released into Tampa Bay in March 2021 . The water is bright green because it contains radioactive elements such as  phosphorous, nitrogen, ammonia, uranium, thorium, radium, and emits radon.  If you think this shouldn't go into the ocean, you are right.  But it already happened, and we have severely paid the price. A harsh wave of Red Tide was induced for nearly nine months, which made the water unsafe to swim in and killed thousands of marine life.  Now, Manatee County and  the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), want to inject that same waste into the ground, and possibly contaminate the drinking water of millions of Floridians.  This is not okay. Nor is it the only option (despite claims from officials). Water treatment processes, such as filtration and reverse osmosis, have been used successfully in the past at Piney Point. These methods sho...

  For my final project, I made a website titled “Waste Not”. My website was dedicated to the advocating against food waste. Communicating in support of a cause, policy, idea, or set of values is advocacy. (Pezzulo and Cox 203) There are multiple modes of advocacy but the one used in my project is public education. Public education is a mode of advocacy that aims to influence social attitudes and behavior. (Pezzulo and Cox 205) The goal of my website was to spread awareness of what food waste is and how it impacts the environment as well as to encourage people to be more conscious of their consumption habits. To complete this goal, I took on the objectives of alerting and amplifying.  To alert means pointing out and naming something in the world. (Pezzulo and Cox 233) A significant impact of digital media on the public sphere is its ability to identify environmental concerns and issues and alert people of them. My way of alerting the public is through my website. My website doe...

       If you've been to the beach this year in Florida, chances are you saw a plethora of deceased fish washed ashore and smelt the consequences of unregulated wastewater dumping. Red tide in Tampa Bay is caused by an abundance of the algae called Karenia Brevis . Red tide is the blooming of algae that absorbs all of the oxygen in the water and suffocates water-dwelling creatures such as fish, marine mammals, and crustaceans. Under natural circumstances, Brevis does not become so abundant that it causes massive fish kills. However, this is caused by human waste pollution such as fertilizers, wastewater, and industrial pollutants which allows for the algae to grow uncontrollably. However, it is important to note that we can limit the number of pollutants and minimize red tide algae blooms. Ultimately, these deaths are avoidable as they are caused by anthropogenic interference. For our project, we created a visual representation of the devastating effects that red tid...

Increasing Shark Conservation Efforts in the Public  By: Louis Borelli, Maya Drabik, Lily Haggerty and Maddie Gates Shark conservation has been an ongoing struggle for years to date. We find that many shark species are becoming more and more endangered as we continue to lose the battle of shark conservation. Similarly, sharks hold a vital part in our ecosystem and without them, the ecosystem will greatly suffer.       As a group, we felt that we all had a strong concern about how shark conservation is portrayed to people. We all agreed that we had seen many misleading facts and that it was difficult to find information out there regarding shark conservation. Along with this, we had all witnessed how poor conservation efforts were affecting the shark populations. The consensus we came to was that not many people truly understand, or have been exposed to, how shark conservation actually works. To combat this, we wanted to advocate for their protection in an attemp...