Environmental Communication

According to Wikipedia...
Environmental communication refers to the study and practice of how individuals, institutions, societies, and cultures craft, distribute, receive, understand, and use messages about the environment and human interactions with the environment. This includes a wide range of possible interactions, from interpersonal communication to virtual communities, participatory decision making, and environmental media coverage. Environmental communication as an academic field emerged from interdisciplinary work involving communication, environmental studies, environmental science, risk analysis and management, sociology, and political ecology.

Today we looked at examples of REPORTS.

The primary goal of a report is to inform. It is a synthesis and summary of complex issues to be read by an audience (large or small, broad or narrow) with potentially different backgrounds. Reports can advocate a desired action, as well as report findings; they can be used for outreach campaigns, to get funding, or as a press release.

Audiences can include: general public, experts, stakeholders, the press, internal workers, or subordinates.

When looking at reports, we first considered the general layout.
How is the information presented? Are there pictures, side bars, boxes, maps, a highlighted message statement?

Next, we used the introduction (or first paragraph) to determine the intended audience, main message, effectiveness, the call to actions.

A. General assumptions: If there are numbers or statistics, the intended audience may be scientists, or people who are somewhat more technical. The report (or press release example we looked at) may have an emotional appeal, intended for the general public to get them hooked and engaged.

Press releases:
-get right to the point (front load message early in the document)
-immediately let you know what the focus is
-captures the audience with emotional appeal
-sometimes a call for action

B. Sidebars or boxes are used to summarize information, or to include information that did not fit into the text but is important.

C. Framing: say what you are going to tell your audience, tell them, and then tell them what you told them

D. ABC: Always Be Closing: always have a purpose for writing!

E. When presenting information, you want to make it exciting and interesting. If the audience is mixed, you want a presentation that they can absorb and invest in. It is crucial to make complex content more interesting.

F. Many times reports answer the following questions: What is the main consequence? If nothing were done, what would be the outcome? What's the worst possible scenario?

G. With mixed audiences, lead with your $money$ statement.

Report analysis activtiy
Read the introduction of the document...
1. What is the main message/ purpose?
2. What is the target audience?
3. What assumptions do the authors make about the audience need?
4. How does language communicate these decisions/ assumptions?
Additionally, we addressed the following questions:
Is there a call to action?
How effective are titles and headings?
What is the audience expectation?
How does the use of images enhance the message?
Does the report clearly state a problem? Do they suggest a solution?

*For an excellent example of a report read: Evaporative demand, transpiration, and photosynthesis: How are they changing? [Week 3 Discussion Forum: Reports- EGU conference abstract]

Take away message:
When writing reports, it is important to consider how language used affects your audience. Additionally, assumptions affect the effectiveness of your conclusion and presentation.

~Lydia Leclair