Roath- LEAP 1 Environmental Cleanup
Environmental Propaganda Poster
The campaign I chose to focus on was environmental cleanup. I picked this topic because environmental protection is a major topic right now especially with global warming becoming such an issue. My target audience was anyone who can help to make a difference which essentially is everybody. This can include things such as recycling or picking up trash on the street or just throwing out your own trash. It can also include more drastic stuff such as campaigns for cleaning up the environment and lessening the amount of toxic chemicals and gasses that are emitted into the air. I enjoyed creating this piece of propaganda because I had never done something like this before and I believe that I am not the most artistic person. So that was a bit of a challenge for me but I enjoyed doing it. The only thing I struggled with was trying to figure out how to do the poster and what to put in it because as I stated I am not very artistic. So therefore I needed to use more gifs and cartoons in order to account for that. I wanted to do a poster and challenge myself a bit since I felt a blog post or radio ad was too basic for a topic this big. The majority of what we have focused on so far has been posters and magazine/newspaper propaganda specifically from World War II as well as deep fakes. So I figured it would be of interest to try and create one for a topic from today’s issues.
For the poster I chose to find an animated background of a clean beach. Being in Narragansett for school and living in Florida back home, I go to the beach a lot. While usually the beaches appear clean from far away, once you arrive and start taking a closer look you can see bottles and cans and plastic trash all over. People get lazy and don’t throw away their trash. This ends up getting into the ocean and harming the wildlife. So I chose to focus on a beach clean up day. While doing some research on the “Do Something” website I came across the “Yass Green” campaign. In this campaign I saw the post about “6 volunteering ideas to help the environment” and the campaign “A new leak.” This 2nd campaign focused on keeping items out of landfills. This gave me the idea of placing a trash pile in the water to signify the dumping of trash in the Ocean. The volunteer post gave me the idea for a “beach clean up day.” While the majority of the topic focused on going green and using recyclable materials, I chose to go a but further and show plastic bottles on the sand with some fish in the water. This was meant to signify the plastics going into the water and harming the wildlife. Many people have heard about the turtles and seen videos of straws stuck in their noses and mouths. This is why it is important to throw out trash and not let it get into the ocean. The final part of the poster was a date and statement for the cleanup. By stating to save the turtles and wildlife, I hoped to get the word out and try and use people’s emotions. Emotions are a big part of propaganda and when wildlife such as turtles or fish get involved people can have a bit more of a feeling towards an issue or topic. Furthermore even if they couldn’t go to the cleanup hopefully it would help to raise awareness about plastic and trash in the ocean and next time they went to the beach they wouldn’t leave their trash or could recycle it instead.
For this propaganda I tried to use what I had learned and seen so far in class. The majority of propaganda posters portrayed an enemy and used people’s emotions in order to push an agenda. For this topic I didn’t feel the need to portray an enemy necessarily because the issue is people and their trash. So instead I showed the trash on the beach. Secondly instead of making it an agenda or political issue this was an environmental issue so by using the wildlife the hope was to feel some emotion towards the animals. This can be a sadness for the plastics getting into the water and hurting them or an anger about people littering and ruining the beaches. I felt that my main issue was trying to find ways to make an animated photo of a clean beach look gross with other animated photos and emojis. Again since I am not very artistic I struggle with this but felt it was decently portrayed. The headline “Community Clean up Day” was meant to capture the attention of the people as it is the header and directly in the top center of the poster. On the bottom was the statement of when the cleanup was and why they should go. Save the animals and clean up the beaches. Lastly was the statement of free pizza. It is always difficult to say no to free things so by adding free food the goal is to get more people to have more incentive to go. It is a relatively simple poster but the issue is clearly shown as well as using ways to play on people’s emotions.
Works Cited:
- S., Eleanor, et al. “Let’s Do This!” Let’s Do This! | DoSomething.Org, dosomethingstrategic.org, www.dosomething.org/us/collections/yasss-green. Accessed 26 Sept. 2023.
- “Mind Over Media.” Mind Over Media Propaganda, propaganda.pathwright.com/home/learn/. Accessed 26 Sept. 2023.
- BeezeeStock. “Istock.” iStock, www.istockphoto.com/videos/cartoon-ocean-background. Accessed 26 Sept. 2023.
