Dam Visuals: The Changing Visual Argument for the Glen Canyon Dam

University of Maine Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020

How do we understand what to do with rivers and dams? How might rhetoric, the ancient study of persuasion, inform and shape this understanding as it relates to river restoration practices? Ecological approaches to rhetoric provide ways for engaging in decision making about dams and river restoration. In this dissertation I present three projects that bring media discourse analysis, reciprocal case study, and cross-cultural digital rhetoric to sites of collaborative decision making about dams and rivers in the Penobscot River watershed (Maine, USA). In this place, the prominent Penobscot River Restoration reconfigured several hydroelectric dams to improve fish passage and hydropower generation. My collaborators and I explore what needs and opportunities remain for further action here and how community-engaged rhetorical ecology can advance decolonization and social-environmental justice. In the first project, we ask how news media about dams portray river restoration and how these portrayals matter for ongoing collaboration and decision making. We use a rhetorical approach within transdisciplinary media discourse analysis to explore 30 years of newspaper coverage of dam removal, with particular focus on news media about the Penobscot Restoration. Our results show that news media have widely framed the project as a success based on technical and social outcomes and that this framing limits what we can understand about the complexities of restoration and ongoing needs that remain on this river. In this way, media analysis can reveal opportunities for further collaborative engagement. In the second project, we build on the first to ask about other histories, futures, and stories that are left out of the dominant Penobscot Restoration success narrative. We advance an ethnographic case study approach where engaging across communities presents opportunities for changing how we do research. Doing research with community partners shifted our study from a retrospective focus to a focus on reciprocation--from looking back on past restoration activity to using research as a way of giving back to those who made the work possible. The results show how building relationships and opening up our research processes to this kind of reordering helps expand understandings of what we can work to restore. In the third project, we explore where reciprocation can lead when advancing research projects in response to our partners' needs. We ask how digital approaches shape the opportunities for collaboratively composing alternative forms of media documentation for decolonization. In our analysis, we reflect on developing procedural digital ethics to support visual portrayals of Indigenous environmental science as a form of ongoing restoration practice. Our results show how this process relies on relationship building, cross-cultural dialogue, and flexible naming practices that reshape how we can collectively see our histories and work together toward socio-environmental justice.

This project investigates visual representations of staged environmental protests that are produced and distributed by the environmental-activist organization Greenpeace, and broadcast through international news media. By examining eight images taken from four separate Greenpeace image campaigns, this thesis shows how these demonstrations generally, and images of them more specifically, draw attention to climate change issues through their rhetorical capacity to challenge dominant cultural values that have enabled climate-changing human activities to persist. As such, the rhetorical capacity of these images further demonstrates Kevin DeLuca’s image event theory, which suggests how visual demonstrations can be designed to attract mass media attention that then leads to public advocacy and adherence. More specifically, this thesis argues that a novel understanding of Kenneth Burke’s paired concepts of identification and disidentification can show us precisely how Greenpeace’s rhetorical agenda unfolds, how their visual representations of extreme environmental activism and advocacy challenge cultural values that support environmentally damaging industrializing practices and the subordination of nature to human progress. To support my argument, Chapter 1 establishes a context for environmental advocacy, describing both the scientific consensus surrounding climate change issues, as well as the mixed opinions held by the public about these very same issues. Chapter 2 examines the academic literature concerning visual rhetoric and environmental advocacy, and introduces DeLuca’s image event theory and Burke’s concepts of identification and disidentification as exploratory lenses through which visual representations of extreme environmental advocacy can be studied. Chapter 3 performs a close reading and analysis of eight images from Greenpeace demonstrations, and outlines the mechanisms through which they achieve their rhetorical effects. Lastly, Chapter 4 posits that visual representations of extreme environmental activism and advocacy provide Greenpeace with a much larger mouthpiece in the world than they could ever achieve using traditional approaches to advocacy and conventional channels of public and political debate. As such, the study concludes that the visual rhetoric of environmental activists has the capacity to perform ideological critique in the process of reshaping public perceptions of climate change issues.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2015

A unique perspective on climate-change graphics is provided by the discipline of rhetoric, which treats these images as arguments that configure polities in specific debates over climate change. Rhetorical approaches remind us that all climate-change arguments are political and that their effects are contingent on the time and place of their presentation. While the research in this area is new and diverse, nevertheless, some common findings emerge: that habitual ways of visualizing climate change work against, not for, effective political action; that rhetorical choices do and should underpin technical climate graphics at fundamental levels; but ironically that nonexperts, and even some experts, perpetuate the myth that climate graphics are transparent, untransformed views of nature. Rhetorical scholarship to date suggests a few paths forward through these problems toward more just, equitable, and effective public deliberation over climate-change policy.

Journal of applied communications, 2023

Plagued by recent and historic drought, the need for water storage and management solutions in California is apparent. As a potential solution, the Sites Reservoir project offers an opportunity to a state eager to conserve and better manage water. The Sites Reservoir project involves complexities from a variety of standpoints and stakeholder perspectives. This study investigated the frames and sources used by The Sacramento Bee to communicate about the Sites Reservoir project over a 10-year period. The most frequently used frames throughout the dataset were "policy and government" and "water conscious," and the sources most frequently utilized for information about the project in the articles were elected officials, government agency representatives, and nonprofit representatives. The findings suggest water management is linked with political activities and supports the assertion that the media tend to focus on the role of policy and political opinion in water management issues. At the same time, the findings suggest the need for water solutions is evident, given the prominence of the "water conscious" frame. Future studies should evaluate frames over time, and investigate the potential nuance between frames used to communicate about water management in different areas of the United States facing water management issues.

2012

In post-environmental news discourse, environmentalism is reduced to a rhetorical motif that is relayed by all sides of the political debate, including the environmental opposition. The phase of post-environmentalism in environmental discourse is indicated by the absorption of environmental messages into mainstream discourse so that they are no longer ‘owned’ by subversive environmentalists, but by anyone claiming to represent the cause. The result is that a counter-discourse is no longer present in the discussion to challenge dominant assumptions about unlimited economic growth. Using critical discourse analysis, this thesis examines the news coverage of governmental regulations aimed at reducing toxic algae in Lake Winnipeg, Canada. The thesis describes how the science is used in the narratives, and compares patterns of doubting science in the coverage with similar patterns found in news discourse historically. The analysis shows that the pro-lake cause is recruited throughout the coverage to boost legitimacy for the Manitoba hog industry and the City of Winnipeg, who leveraged public campaigns opposing the regulations. Rather than contributing to a public understanding of the tension between environmental and economic paradigms, the simplistic cost-benefit analysis of the regulations in the coverage decontextualises the problem from its complex political-economic origins. Furthermore, rather than presenting environmental science in a way that aids public understanding, science is either credited or discredited to reinforce the industry and governmental positions. The need for transparent communication of environmental problems and their causes is thus hindered by the legitimacy claims-making that dominates the discourse. The repeated and shared voicing of environmental messages in the media further embeds the discourse into a post-environmental phase by excluding a counter-discourse from the discussion – environmentalism becomes talked about by everyone, and yet discussed by no one.

Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée/European Review of Applied Psychology, 2014

Introduction. -The media is considered to be a social agent that intervenes in the elaboration of social representations of environmental issues. Objective. -This research analyses media representations of environmental issues and how they have been constructed and transformed from the Rio Summit in 1992 to 2006. The authors adopted a constructionist approach based on the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1961 to describe the generation of information by the mass media. Method. -A sample of 1039 news articles from two Spanish newspapers (La Vanguardia and El País) was analysed. The period of study ranged from the Rio Earth Summit to several years after the Johannesburg Summit (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006), and the study analyses both the content and form of the environmental news. Results. -This longitudinal study shows not only an increase in environmental news during the period of analysis but also an increased variety of themes addressed and represented. The results evidence significant urban problems in recent years. The environment has shifted from being associated with nature to being predominately associated with the urban environment. Conclusion. -The results suggest that there has been a movement from scientific to political discourse and a change towards greater reflection and social recognition of the relevance of environmental issues.

The research reported here examined the strategy of using specificity, quotes, characters, and case studies to increase the interest level of informative text about using wood for energy. Focus groups were used to gain in-depth understanding of how citizens perceive information conveyed through this style of text. The text accomplished its goal of sharing information and encouraging future involvement, but themes expressed in the focus groups highlight the challenges of creating interesting materials on complex issues for citizens. This article explains these concerns of mistrust, bias, and misconceptions to help others overcome similar challenges.

International Journal of Communication, 2016

We propose a rigorous basis for identifying and assessing visual frames as part of a preproduction phase of formative evaluation for climate change campaigns. We review research on images in climate change communication, and the role of formative evaluation in communication campaigns in general and climate change campaigns in particular. Manual content analysis generated over 100 highly reliable image themes, and cluster analysis generated 15 dominant visual frames, from 350 images in 200 randomly-selected climate change news articles from 1974-2009. We discuss possible implications for utilization of those frames in climate change campaign messages. The dominant visual frames also provide bases for more structured and comprehensive formative evaluation research that could provide justification for using or avoiding certain visual frames when seeking to achieve particular outcomes though communication with specific audiences.

Infographics, which integrate visuals and text, can increase audience engagement with message content. Relying on two experiments, this study demonstrates the role of visuals for decisions to critically evaluate pro-environmental messages. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model as a theoretical foundation, we demonstrate that individuals engage in greater levels of issue-relevant thinking when shown infographics compared to messages that rely just on text or just on illustration, with learning preferences and visual literacy as moderators. The findings demonstrate that visual content is an important factor for persuasive message processing, and infographic messages hold opportunities for the communication of environmental issues.