Clean Coal Ads, Pro and Con

This advertisement is funded by Americas for Balanced Energy Choices


This advertisement is from AmericasPower.Org

This advertisement is from ThinkReality, and so this one.




This news feature is from CBS News.


On pages 20 and 22 of your text, you'll notice that Cox argues for a two-part definition of environmental communication. On the one hand, it's pragmatic. That is, communication, such as the ads above, are intended to change or solidify an opinion. Such ads often solicit support for a cause--vote or candidate X or donate money to organization Y. On the other hand, environmental communication is "constitutive." That is, the words and images of the ads appeal to a set of commonplace understandings about the United States and about the natural world. In other words, viewers understand the issue of coal-based energy production by means of these and similar ads. In that sense, language is not transparent but a form of "symbolic action" (20-22).

Review these ads and write an analysis of the the symbolic action in the ads. Coal--after all--is just a rock. But coal is also and inevitably a symbol. How do the ads position this symbol?

Leopold's "Thinking Like Mountain"

Aldo Leopold was a naturalist and writer. The short essay "Thinking Like A Mountain" is quoted in your textbook on page 26.

Click the above link and read the entire essay. On the discussion board, write a paragraph in which you describe the way in which Cox uses Leopold as a source for his argument.

Why did Cox choose Leopold? How did he incorporate Leopold's text into his own? How does your experience with the whole essay differ from your encounter with the quotation?

Can Audi Outrun the Green Police?

Here's a YouTube link to an Audi advertisement that ran during the 2010 superbowl.

Can you evaluate this ad in ways that are consistent with Cox's suggestions on page 16?

What are the pragmatic appeals (think logos, pathos, ethos)? To what "dominant discourse[s]" does the ad appeal?

Environmental Communication In the News

On the opening pages of Chapter 1, Cox notes that the environmental news appears regularly on the pages of major news magazines. Here's a list of just a few recent stories from the New York Times.

You see articles related to coal, owls, champagne, and an environmental disaster (the recent Gulf Coast Oil Spill).

Suppose we wanted to categorize or tag these and related stories. What tags would you use? What other types of environmental news stories, not depicted above, do you typically see? What tags would we give these stories?

Welcome to WSC 1

Dear Students,

I keep this blog as a way to organize and communicate web-based content to the class. As such, I aim to make the blog a good resource for you when composing essays and short assignments.

You can look through old posts via the search feature, by date, or by the tag cloud at the bottom of the page. Not all posts will be relevant to our particular class, but you should be able to locate relevant posts easily enough.

You can access a link to the blog through the Blackboard portal.

The Lorax

A video version of Dr. Seuss's well known story The Lorax.










If you enjoy The Jon Stewart Show, you might like this short clip as well. The clip is obviously much shorter than The Lorax and the two are not directly comparable--except that they both deal with images of trees and logging. I'm interested, however, in the way in which the Stewart clip--however short--makes its argument. Any ideas?

Quotations and Context

YouTube and Context

A good article about the importance of context when quoting sources (or, in this case, professors)