Thinking About Framing For Various Audiences
Writer’s Blog 10
My last blog of the semester! As I reflect on this course as well as the assignments I have left to do, I think it is interesting to think about how writing is framed for various audiences. As I spoke about in my last blog, I am writing a feature story about varying perspectives on the environment, and how those perspectives may affect agency. I will be using an anthropological approach by looking at the issue from a cross-cultural lens. Since I will be adapting this story from academic literature, I will need to focus on how to write for a general audience. I am currently doing an academic literature review on the topic where I use field-specific jargon, etc. However, when writing for a public audience, my tone, words, and general approach will need to be adjusted.
The issue of how to effectively transfer academic research into public knowledge is something I have been thinking about a lot. As such, anthropologists and other academics can write as much as they want about ideas for improving something, but if that work can only be accessed or understood by a select few, what good does it do? That is exactly why I am choosing to write my feature story on the same topic as another research paper of mine. If I am doing research on the best ways to cultivate agency against climate change, shouldn't I share that in a way that is actually usable on a larger scale?
There are several ways in which writing for a general audience versus an academic audience is different. For this particular piece, I have to think about how certain things will sound to the general public. While an anthropologist might be more willing to accept that Indigenous people from the Amazon may have beneficial views on human-nature relationships, this might sound flat-out crazy to some. There may be some information that I must omit for the purpose of sounding legit to a broad audience, I don’t want them to think I’m as crazy. If I start proposing too foreign of ideas, unfortunately, my work will be dismissed as non-applicable. Not only is it about how I word the research I do present, but it is also about what research I present as well.
In addition to the fact that some information simply may be unconvincing to a general audience, I have to think about my angle. As such, maybe critiquing Western culture isn’t the best thing to do when I am trying to convince a Western audience to listen to what I have to say. Instead, I need to be careful about how my opinions come across. If I am too critical, I believe my work will also be dismissed.
From this, it may seem like my research is radical and Western-hating. It really isn’t. However, I know from my PPW classes as well as just talking to my friends and the public about some of my research that things that sound different are not easily accepted. When I start talking about how plants have feelings and rivers should be given legal personhood, people start raising eyebrows. Though I am tailoring my feature story to a publication that my work would fit in, since the overall purpose of my work is to spark change in thought and action, it would ideally be digestible for everyone.
