Category: RCL

For the History of a Controversy project, I think two ideas could be interesting: the potential banning of TikTok and gun control.

The idea of banning TikTok has been floating around for several years. According to CBS news, some of the most common arguments against it involve its access to US consumer data as a Chinese company and issues with censorship or suppression of information on the app. The concern is that, with the company being based in China, the Chinese government could spy on US citizens via company data and potentially influence US ideologies by promoting or suppressing certain content. Arguments against its banning include claims to free speech and the potential impacts of one government ban or forced company sale on other businesses in the US economy. With so many users in the US, the push to ban TikTok manifests as a public controversy with reasonable and abundant arguments on both sides of the issue.

Gun control is a more wide-ranging public controversy since it isn’t necessarily limited to the last 5-8 years. As a highly partisan issue, the voting public is pulled into the idea of limited or restrictive gun control early in life. People advocating for gun control often cite problems with vast gun violence in the US and the need for intensive background checks, evaluations, and other restrictions that ensure people who get guns have valid reasons to possess a deadly weapon. People advocating against gun control policies most often cite the Constitutional right to bear arms, the definition of which is also debated between parties. Ultimately, the American public has a vested interest in their access to guns for their personal safety (again, with each side emphasizing a different element of personal safety) or lifestyle and recreation. This creates the foundation for a true public controversy with evidence dating to the creation of the USA.

 

LINK TO TED TALK RECORDING (edit: 2:54 PM on 11/23/24)

https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Alexis+Nicole+Wagners+Zoom+Meeting/1_cdppktf5

Here’s the link for the slides!

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGWN62BkE0/tXvYxX5N6Wj4obsPmJ8BMw/edit?utm_content=DAGWN62BkE0&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

 

Hi everyone! For my evolving ideas assignment, I am going to be analyzing the rise of DEI initiatives in business and the public perception of them from the mid-1900s to today. Here’s the link to view it! Let me know in the comments if the link doesn’t work.

https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Alexis+Nicole+Wagner%27s+Zoom+Meeting/1_0xb5p4s2https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Alexis+Nicole+Wagner%27s+Zoom+Meeting/1_0xb5p4s2

Edit: Changed the link! Thanks for pointing that out, Emma. If there are still issues, I’ll be checking the comments.

Joe Smith: How to use a paper towel | TED Talk

My favorite TED talk, strangely enough, is about paper towels. Senior year, my Bible teacher showed my class this video as an example of how to structure a TED talk before we had to create our own. The thing that fascinates me most about it is how the speaker manages to make such a mundane topic something so engaging. The speaker, Joe Smith, moved through important statistics, physical and visual examples, and his call to action with ease and humor. He had the audience narrate his actions to ensure people were paying attention consistently. He explained common habits that the audience would relate to without shaming them. Finally, he illustrated a how simple way of changing such a basic action as using a paper towel can massively impact the amount of waste people create globally.

In my TED talk, I aim to be engaging like Joe Smith. I want to incorporate audience engagement in some way, but I know I need to choose a topic that will accommodate that. Some of my ideas are as follows:

1. Changes in the amount and quality of sapphic representation since the mid-1900s
2. Changes in marketing strategies over time, and the impact of both social standards and legal restrictions surrounding ethical marketing on companies and consumers
3. Changes in pop culture representation of high school students over time
4. What makes a bestseller? Analyzing the genres, tropes, target markets, and qualities of some of the most popular novels of the last several decades, and finding how the trends have changed or remained stagnant
5. Tracing the rise of DE&I programs in business and the internal and external factors that have made those programs possible and necessary
6. Analyzing the change in the prevalence of corporate social responsibility initiatives and the impacts on company brand image over time

Outline

I. Introduction

• How many times a day do you think you use paper products? Once? Twice? Ten times?
• EPA: the average American uses over 700 pounds of paper per year.
• The paper we use comes from our forests, and deforestation has significant impacts on air quality, land stability, habitats, and human health.
• This speech will analyze a World Wildlife Fund advertisement (which focuses on deforestation’s impacts on human health) 
  • How it uses commonplaces, color theory, and copywriting to shift the audience’s perception of deforestation from an external issue to a personal one

II. Main Point 1: Commonplaces and Symbolism

• The lungs as a symbol of human health and illness.
  • Connection to air quality and anti-smoking PSA visuals — new application to environmental health here
  • Trees as human lungs, suggesting deforestation corrupts lung health.
• Subpoint B: Pathos through fear for personal health.
  • Most deforestation PSAs focus on how humans impact the environment, not human health.
    • Builds pathos via fear for oneself, not just the environment
  • WWF’s strategy relies on humanity’s inherent selfishness & the idea that we only take action when the problem impacts us

III. Main Point 2: Color Theory

• Use of green in the advertisement.
  • Detail: Green symbolizes health, growth, freshness, harmony, and prosperity.
  • Detail: Different shades of green indicate overall ecosystem health.
• Use of brown and gray.
  • Brown conveys death, decay, loss, and isolation.
    • Worth noting: brown can be used positively in ads, indicating wisdom/timelessness/stability
    • This ad relies on prior knowledge of deforestation and sees the brown land through that lens
  • Varying shades of grey in the sky depict feelings of depression and doom, emphasizing impending impact on humanity (“the calm before the storm”)
• Green in destroyed area/saturation
  • Worth noting: still green in the “dead” part of the lungs/forest
  • Call back to green=growth/prosperity → still a lingering chance of survival
  • Colors are also all saturated → both the healthy ecosystem and destruction are striking… but the health is beautiful, and the deforestation is alarming

IV. Main Point 3: Copywriting and Ethos

• Simple yet empowering copywriting.
  • “Before it’s too late” emphasizes urgency and time-sensitivity
  • Apply to temporal lens of analysis: this is a real problem, and deforestation’s impact on us is looming just over our heads
• Ethos of WWF as a credible nonprofit.
  • While the rest of the advertisement does the majority of the work (as explained), the WWF’s reputation enhances the ad’s credibility.
  • Encourages audience to change habits or donate.

V. Conclusion

• Recap the use of commonplaces, color theory, and copywriting in the advertisement.
• The WWF advertisement effectively shifts the perception of deforestation to a personal issue, inspiring fear and potential action.
• Leave the audience with a question: Is it ethical to create an advertisement that aims to create action by inspiring fear?

How many times a day do you think you use paper products? Once? Twice? Ten times? Well, the paper that we use comes from somewhere: our forests. Deforestation is just what you would think. All over the world, our forests are being decimated to create consumer products and benefit corporations. It impacts air quality, land stability, habitats, and more. The following advertisement from the World Wildlife Fund looks at deforestation through the lens of air quality and deforestation’s impact on human health. By using the commonplaces associated with lung health advertisements alongside color theory and clever copywriting, the World Wildlife Fund shifts the audience’s perception of deforestation from an external, irrelevant issue to one of personal importance.

Outlining:

• Introduction (above)
• Visual breakdown of advertisement
  • Commonplace of lungs as a symbol of both human health/illness and air quality
  • Trees make up the lungs and deforestation portrays unhealthy/destroyed parts of the lungs → ties deforestation to human health
  • Interesting strategy because most deforestation PSAs focus on human impacts on the environment, not the issue’s inherent impact on humans
  • The commonplace connections build fear for oneself rather than fear for the environment
    • Advertisement relies on the idea that humanity is selfish, and will only take action if the problem impacts them
• Color theory
  • Green: healthy, vibrant
    • Different shades based on tree areas/grass areas
    • Consistent green makes the brown area stick out more
  • Brown
    • Brown in this ad = dead trees, dirt, loss, sorrow
  • Sky: grey, cloudy and drab
  • Color tone
    • Rich and dark color tones, like the saturation is turned up
    • More striking and eye-catching
    • Conveys the idea that the beauty of the forests is breathtaking, but the desolation is just as striking and alarming
• Copywriting
  • “Before it’s too late. wwf.org” followed by the well-known icon for the WWF
  • Ad lets the visuals speak for themselves, just solidifying the point with the copy
  • The copy’s simplicity conveys the idea that people shouldn’t have to overthink or debate the validity of the argument that deforestation is dangerous
    • It assumes that people are aware of the problem and just need to act on that awareness
  • Ethos improved because of the branding with WWF: people wouldn’t pay as much attention or consider it credible if it wasn’t pushed out by a nonprofit like the WWF.
• Conclusion
  • Reiterate the impacts of the commonplace, colors, and copywriting on the message and ask the audience if they are more likely to fight deforestation after seeing this advertisement

One of the elevator pitches that stuck out to me today was Olivia Savochka’s. I loved her introduction, especially how she pulled the audience in by encouraging everyone to hold out their finger and look at their fingerprint. She also had excellent points about how the image of a fingerprint conveys the ideas of individuality and uniqueness, and how that works in an upsetting way when the audience looks at the garbage patch in the picture. Every person leaves a fingerprint on the Earth and our environment, and enough of us left a damaging mark to create such a catastrophic reality.

The individuality of the fingerprint combined with the commonplace of a fingerprint representing guilt creates an ultimately bleak and uncomfortable picture for the audience. We all know that we are part of the problem and contributed to this plastic fingerprint on the ocean. Olivia did a great job of pulling these ideas together and voicing the purpose of the advertisement: convincing people to stop leaving a negative fingerprint on the world.

I also want to address Olivia’s organization in her pitch. Everything flowed smoothly and I never needed extra context to understand what she spoke about. She explained the various harms of plastic in the ocean well, tied in emotional appeals by describing animal fatalities, and used vivid, empowering language to hold her audience’s attention the whole time. My only advice moving forward is to address the impact of the logo and message at the bottom of the advertisement.

Overall, hats off to Olivia! I cannot wait to see how her project evolves.

What would we do if we couldn’t breathe? Unfortunately, the answer is clear–we wouldn’t survive long enough to figure it out.

Deforestation is dangerous to humans and our environment. It is a prominent issue in climate change and activism due to its impact on air quality, habitats, and more. The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) advertisement focuses on deforestation’s negative impact on humans. In the picture, the vibrant green trees in the wilderness represent healthy human lungs. However, the bottom right of the lungs is suffering; deforestation eradicated the trees and left in its wake a brown, dead scar on the land.

The visual rhetoric in this piece listed on Architecture & Design’s website emphasizes that the health of our world and our forests has a direct impact on human health and survival. Additionally, the text and logo at the bottom of the advertisement contribute to the credibility and urgency of it. These aspects of the ad will be my primary analytical focus.

In this advertisement, the WWF communicates that deforestation is real, dangerous, and the result of human action. Here, the WWF inherently asks the question: are you ready to stop deforestation, or are you ready to stop breathing? As engaged members of our global society, it is important to evaluate the validity of that argument.

Thank you.

When I think about the Sustainable Development Goals surrounding life below water and life on land, one of the first advertisements that comes to mind is for the soap brand Dawn. Many of Dawn’s commercials spotlight disastrous oil spills and their impact on local wildlife. A common video advertisement for the brand depicts a duckling drenched in oil and grease. It struggles to survive in its habitat after an oil spill until an animal rescue team picks it up, cleans it gently with Dawn, and releases it happily into the wild. Print advertisements in the same ad campaign show just a clean duckling next to a bottle of Dawn soap, or something similar.

In this campaign, the cute duckling is the hook to attract the audience’s attention. The oil spill’s effects on the duckling build empathy within the audience, and thus respect for Dawn when the soap helps the issue. In this situation, the rhetoric’s commonplace is the social norm of loving animals, pets, and other cute creatures. Also seen in ASPCA advertisements, the visual of a suffering animal is a call to action for any animal lover or pet owner.

The Dawn oil spill advertisements are skillfully presented to bolster their brand image and impact audience sentiment surrounding environmental justice. The rhetorical situation of the ad was closely tied to the gradual rise of information available about climate change, alongside the notorious oil spills of the last several decades, such as the Exxon Valdez spill. Due to the social commonplace of loving animals—particularly stereotypically cute ones like ducklings—the advertisement can inherently overcome most rhetorical opposition. After seeing the advertisements, supporters of large oil companies or opponents of environmental justice initiatives may be pushed to silence, as the public’s sentimental, animal-loving commonplace creates a moral standard that the opposition cannot effectively meet.