ENG 335 RandWaPublicDiscourse

                         In today's world, much of the blame for climate change and affecting the natural flora and fauna of the world is placed on the backs of the average citizen. We admonish each other for buying fast fashion, driving diesel cars, using chemical cleaners, and not recycling. We believe that these small acts are the reason our planet is falling into disaster at the rate it is now. However, this is not the average citizen's fault.                         The Carbon Majors Report in 2017 stated that 100 energy companies have been responsible for 71% of all industrial emissions since human-driven climate change was officially recognized. The top 15 US food and beverage companies generate nearly 630 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year. Around 17.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions come from Proct...

"Climategate:" the 2009 email scandal involving scientists from the University of Anglia's Climate Research Center. Thousands of emails sent between the scientists were suddenly hacked and released to the public. Harmless emails between coworkers were suddenly turned into political weapons, used to push a climate-change skeptic agenda. Accentuated by the media, this email hacking turned into a scandalous event that caused much room for concern. The reality of the emails were quite different than what was shown in the media. The media presented the emails as a deception of climate change, proof that human activity does not cause climate change, and a conspiracy. However, the emails proved none of these claims. The emails were frank conversations between scientists about the severity of climate change, not a climate conspiracy. So why did these emails get manipulated? I believe the reason for this is our post-truth world. News sources need to have viewership. People are mor...

Honestly so far in this book even including the subsequent chapters, I have found myself most disagreeing with what Johnathon Haidt says in both Ch.4 "Morality Binds and Blinds" and his TEDTalk. I will come out and say it is because I am a devout, practicing Catholic. I will agree however, that in a way having a moral code does bind you in the sense that when you as an individual depart from it you tend to feel hypocritical. Yes, when people latch on to some attitude toward morality that is fundamental is can blind them, but that is not the issue with morality itself, but rather with the person practicing it. I want to address a  first what the book says (though the book mentions the TedTalk I will address that separately) or rather what Johnathan Haidt says in I'm Right and You're An Idiot.  While I understand that Hoggan summarizes what he probably heard from Haidt about Haidt's work I should point out that the generalizations of Liberal and Conservative seem to...

 On page 43, it says that an effective way to strike communication gold is to start mining for more pluralistic narrative resources because a pluralistic advocacy environment is one where people can see people like them on both sides of the issues, and also people who are not like them on both sides in order to open the conversation to something that is more open-ended and productive rather than hostile. I think that we've had more pluralistic narratives surface in recent years. But, even with pluralistic narratives, it runs the risk of being "wrong"(and by "wrong" I mean "It does not align with my current views on this topic so it is not worth listening to"). We cling to our beliefs even when presented with new information. There is also this issue about not wanting to admit when you're wrong or even saying that there is another side to this that is worth listening to because it shakes our identity. But, I wanted to ask you all about this: Have yo...

Fox News interests me like a burning house would interest a nosey neighbor. I detest, loathe,  despise  the news network, yet I keep finding myself peeking at the screen when it's on and listening a little closer when I hear it blasting in another room--am I a masochist? Although I have such strong feelings about Fox News, it's recently come to my attention that I don't know much about it. Thus, I want to use this blog post as a way to do a little research, to allow myself to rubberneck a little longer at the exploding building I'm always driving past. Fox News was created by the multi-billionaire "media mogul" Rupert Murdoch, who--before getting into the televised news scene--was in charge of the Fox Broadcasting Company, which included shows like The Simpsons, America's Most Wanted, and COPS. In order to get his news company broadcasted, Murdoch hired Republican consultant Roger Ailes to look after it and, instead of getting cable companies to pay to bro...

 In chapter four of I'm Right and You're an Idiot , Hoggan reasons that advertising pays into polarization. Depending on just how controversial of topics an ad covers, I believe this claim is true, to varying degrees.  Just look at ads like this one: Whether coffee is your style or not (certainly not mine), a simple visual advert such as Nescafe's uses a clever visual metaphor to convey its message: coffee is like your alarm clock, and once you drink it, you'll be awake, similar to one of these loud little clocks. This ad is clever in another sense as well: it's not polarizing, which makes it pleasant to look at and admirably clever, even to non-coffee lovers such as myself. It doesn't claim to be the best band of coffee with any medals or satire; it simply exists as a suggestion that "hey, our brand will wake up up if you need it."  This ad is easy to perceive the brand and product with respect and friendliness (something Hoggan says we all should do ...

  "The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. Rather it is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda, and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our creative problems." (Hoggan) When reading this, one might question, 'What exactly is the problem with propaganda?' The term has definitely gotten its bad reputation after the course of the most recent years. When referring to the most recent propaganda, we can attest that it is very much alive in the sense that the media tends to form up lies or create false advertising to fit their agenda. It has become a lot more difficult to know the truth on what is going on in the recent news we see. There is also a big influence when it comes to social media. There is a lot of misuse when it comes to social media by different political parties as they tend to spread misinformation to help sup...

I am a part of the Super Smash Brothers community, which means I go to the local club here on campus and try to keep myself informed on what occurs with the rest of the community nationally. Unfortunately, if anyone reading this is also part of the community is reading this, chances are you know where this is going. To those of you who are not...let's just say that Smash has had its good and bad characters, and by bad we basically mean illegal. Several top players throughout the past few years had apparently had relations with minors to some degree or another. These individuals have been properly called out and kicked from the community, but that seems to be the beginning of a problem. Don't get me wrong, kicking predators out of a child-heavy community is always a plus, but the problem arrives when the conversation moves to Twitter, the platform most commonly used in the community.  This phenomenon occurs in other communities (I'm sure) but as far as Smash is concerned onc...

 Before we get into a true discussion, I thought it would be useful to lay out a few definitions defined in chapters two and three of I'm Right and You're an Idiot : Advocacy Trap:  A "trap" we find ourselves in when "we come to believe that people who disagree with us are wrongdoers" - it "causes us to become locked into such a foe stance that we lost sight of our purpose" - prevents us from "[collaborating] to solve global or systemic problems" because it makes us treat one another as enemies Stance:  A term revolving around the "attitudes we hold toward another person or group" - it also "allows us to describe others as friend or foe, from bosom buddies down the spectrum to bitter enemies" Cognitive Dissonance:  "A state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent" - it "keeps us committed to our beliefs - es...

As I began reading Chapter 1 of James Hoggan's I'm Right and You're an Idiot , I automatically pictured how people have been heavily influenced by digital technology. In today's society, people are surrounded by different forms of technology. Smartphones, tablets, television, and computers consume our daily lives. We complete coursework on computers, contact our friends on smartphones, send emails through tablets, and watch movies through television screens. People that have access to the internet are able to retrieve and post information in a matter of seconds. These forms of technology have allowed people to be capable of reaching information from across the globe, as well as have discussions with others that are far away. While technology has brought people these positive aspects, technology has influenced one major aspect: communication skills.  Our access to texting and social media has allowed us to sit behind a screen and form a set of text to send to another per...

  YouTube ads. They’re everywhere. There’s no feeling quite like being forced to sit through two back-to-back un-skippable videos trying to shill you the Facebook app again or some life changing, paraben free, soy-based pet shampoo. It’s no secret that ads mostly fight dirty. They appeal to the senses, to our desires of what we think an ideal life should be. A Coca Cola commercial advertises itself as the perfect complement to a roaring summer bonfire with the gang. Subaru cars has been specifically engineered to protect your precious loved ones, so you can go on your picture-perfect Californian road trip with total peace of mind.  Advertisements, through their prevalence in our daily lives and their desire to dig themselves into our consciousnesses, are powerful tools in upholding certain cultural norms as well as creating new ones. Something which can be pretty dangerous.  Take this commercial for Amazon Alexa, for example. I just stumbled across it one day on YouTu...

You're walking through a dense, dark forest--you've no recollection of how you got here, but your body seems to know where it's going, your feet guiding you towards a flickering bluish light and accompanied murmuring in the distance. As you get closer to it, you start to make out what the murmured words are saying; it seems to be talking about food whilst a happy tune plays in the background.  You reach where the light and noise was coming from, now standing in front of an older television that's playing a loop of commercials from the popular fast-food restaurant chain KFC. The mascot, Colonel Sanders, is in the middle of advertising a menu item,  "... fill yourself up with my five dollar fill-up box!" The Colonel goes quiet after this even though the catchy music keeps going, staring into the distance. Suddenly, the actor's  friendly demeanor slips away and instead he snarls at the camera, at the audience, at you specifically. Reaching his hands out, they...