Project InstructionsThis project is not designed to be overly complicated or to take a lot of time. Instead it is designed to focus on your own awareness of environmental concerns and allow you to use your creativity to come up with an innovative solution to raise awareness for your chosen issue. This project is broken up into 3 parts:
The environmental issue in scientific news
The environmental issue in the public news
Your plan to raise awareness for the environmental issue
Part 1: The Environmental Issue in Scientific NewsThe first part of this project is to search for a scientific news article about ongoing environmental issue or environmental crisis. We have covered a number of issues including:
Anthropogenic climate change and the climate crisis
Pollution
Habitat loss and destruction
Biodiversity loss
Natural disasters (especially fires)
Part 1: Picking an Article
Your article must come from Science News (Links to an external site.), Science Daily (Links to an external site.) or IFL Science (Links to an external site.) as these scientific news sources are sourced from primary or secondary peer-reviewed scientific literature. This literature is listed either at the end of the article (Science News and Science Daily) or as clickable links in the article itself (IFL Science)
Your article should be fairly specific to a single event, however for big-picture issues such as climate change it should focus on a specific instance of an action or issue that contributes to anthropogenic climate change (ex. deforestation)
Do not pick a topic that refers to paleo-climate or paleontology, even if it lists a connection to a modern species or evolution. This project is about a CURRENT issue, not a prehistoric issue
Your articles can be up to a year and a half old (~December 2019) but if your environmental issue has been ongoing for many years prior to that (ex. deforestation in the Amazon), that is okay as well
Part 1: Write-Up
The write-up for Part 1 is very similar to what you have been doing for your current events. You need to provide:
A summary of the article in your own words and without direct quotations
A citation of the article and where you found it
Your interpretation of the article in the greater context of environmental issues, especially those that are directly related to, or are the same as, the issue you are researching. Essentially, what does this article mean to our understanding of the environment and evidence or observations that support known ongoing issues?Ex: an article about the declines of a specific species of fish can be related to and included in the greater context of overexploitation of marine fishes, which are becoming increasingly overexploited to the point of near-collapse or complete collapse
This write up should be about 1 – 2 pages double spaced. If your write up is shorter, do not use “filler” to make it longer. You are graded on completeness of your summary and analysis of the article and its place in our understanding of environmental issues, not on the length of your assignment
Part 2: The Environmental Issue in Popular NewsThis part of your project focuses on an exploration of how your topic is presented in the popular and public news and sources that are commonly available to or accessed by the general public. An integral part of finding a way to raise awareness and change social perceptions of environmental issues is to look at how environmental crises are generally portrayed in public forums and news outlets. This section is designed to give you insight into how the general population sees your topic, which may provide you with context to the challenges you may face as you try to raise awareness
To complete this part of your project, you should pick one or two (or more) recently published or presented pieces of public “news” from the last few years. From these “news pieces”, you should generate arguments about how most of the public understands the significance or “believes in” your topic based on the content in the commonly accessible news. If you find articles or pieces of news that present information in a similar fashion, you can use generalizations that describe them both as long as you reference the specific source it comes from
Good places to look for public “news” include:
Popular “news” websites and (ex. Washington Post, New York Times, HuffPost, Vice)
TV news channels (ex. CBS, NBC, ABC, CW/KTLA, FoxNews, CNN)
“Click-bait” articles
YouTube (especially “non-news” or non-scientifically validated accounts) and other content-creator outlets
Social media (ex. Twitter, Facebook Posts or Pages, Reddit, Tumblr or other blog sites)
Podcasts and radio shows
Part 2: Write-Up
In this section discuss how you think your issue is most commonly presented in the news and how the presentation influences the public’s understanding and general belief or disbelief. Make sure you justify your opinions with examples from the “news” sources you’ve found.
You may want to consider the type of imagery, writing or presentation style, popularity of the presenter, general accessibility of the piece, and the platform that is used to present itThis section should be no more than 3 pages double-spaced.
Part 3: Raising AwarenessThis final part of your project focuses on generating an “action plan” to raise awareness about your topic to the public. You can focus this on the “small scale” by tackling awareness within your own community or city, or come up with a “large-scale” way to raise awareness on a country or global scale. This is a time for you to be creative and come up with ideas that you think will be feasible and realistic as well as effective for raising awareness. Your plan to raise awareness must include a way to present valid scientific information from the news or publication (in Part 1) to the general public. Think of ways that you can best grab the attention of your audience and interact with them while still accurately presenting current scientific understanding of your topic
You do not have to actually carry out your plan, but it should reflect something that you can do and are comfortable with doing. This should not be a list of general actions that can be taken to reduce human impact. Make sure you are thorough in your description in what your plan entails to raise awareness; simply saying “I will make a Facebook post” is not enough. You need to provide details and examples of how you intend to raise awareness and change your audience’s perception of your topic. This include your platform(s), imagery, and presentation style as well as other resources such as interviews and established organizations (if applicable)
This is the “longest” section of the project due to the numerous creative opportunities available to you. This section should be no more than 4 pages double-spaced.