Environmental Communication Products Advocating for LEED in Boston
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Environmental Communication Products Advocating for LEED in Boston
Environmental communication products are crucial to promoting environmental conservation efforts. Environmental communication products communicate the need for and mode of environmental conservation to the public. This communication promotes public efforts toward environmental preservation. The products of environmental communication range from websites to mass media depending on the audience. In the present paper, the environmental information products are intended to convince the Boston public housing sector to adopt Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in public housing to cut down on carbon emissions by 2050. Consequently, the paper will provide hashtag activism, newspaper articles, and protests as the appropriate environmental communication products.
Environmental communication refers to information flows that convey messages on environmental conservation. These information flows speak to the socio-economic and political relevance of environmental conservation (Zikargae, 2018). Additionally, environmental communication is categorized into internal and external environmental communication. Internal environmental communication refers to information structures within an organization that is meant to raise awareness and promote innovation towards environmental conservation (Zikargae, 2018). Inversely, external communication structures engage all stakeholders of environmental conservation in promoting public awareness (Zikargae, 2018). The external environmental communication structures are relevant because of the aim of promoting mass adoption of LEED in the Boston public housing sector.
Hashtag activism is a useful external environmental communication product. A pillar of social movements is the concentrated focus of public attention on a central goal or idea which provides a sense of social identity. Social media platforms facilitate this concentration of focus using hashtags which refer to a particular real-life event (Malik et al., 2018). Resultantly, hashtag activism is a useful campaign tool to create public awareness and promote social change, especially among the youth. Hashtags also reach wide audiences due to the absence of geographical constraints and the proliferation of social media platforms. Additionally, hashtag activism motivates mass adoption because of individual interests, such as personal branding (Brünker, 2020). Therefore, the project can create a hashtag that clearly shows the benefits of the intended shift to LEED in Boston’s public housing sector. The hashtag can be #LEEDINGBoston which is modelled against the campaign message. The members of the project can then attach the hashtag to social media posts depicting the benefits of such a transition which will motivate mass adoption of the hashtag and subsequent public pressure for a shift to LEED public housing.
Newspaper articles facilitate environmental communication on a wide scale. The traditional forms of media are still relevant sources of information for the public. The public is dependent on these sources, especially in cases where there is no first-hand information on the events being reported (Happer, 2013). Therefore, traditional sources of media are a pillar of informing public belief and can focus the public interest on particular topics depending on the agenda-setting motives. The press, or newspaper, is a key product of environmental communication that can be used to create environmental awareness concerning the efficacy of LEED in the public housing sector of Boston. The project members can begin by writing periodical articles on the benefits of LEED in the most widely read newspaper in Boston. The periodical articles will get a reader, following which will result in the mass adoption of LEED. The efforts can be augmented with radio shows that discuss the newspaper articles as they come out to increase public focus on the need for a shift to LEED.
Protests present a last resort measure to promote environmental communication and initiate social change. Protests are used to present public dismay towards policies or laws to force the regime to institute change (Gillan, 2019). Additionally, protests disseminate information to a wide audience due to the use of digital media to cover the events of the protest. Peaceful protests can be employed as a product of environmental communication on transitioning to LEED in Boston. The project members can initiate the process by acquiring permits for peaceful demonstrations such as marches. Additionally, this group can create posters and post them online for the protesters to print. The news coverage that will be generated by the protests will facilitate the spread of information on the benefits of LEED, which will, in turn, create pressure for a transition in the public housing sector of Boston.
References
Brünker, F., Wischnewski, M., Mirbabaie, M., & Meinert, J. (2020, January). The role of social media during social movements–observations from the# metoo debate on Twitter. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
Gillan, K. (2019). Social movements, protest, and practices of social change. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology, 301-318.
Happer, C., & Philo, G. (2013). The role of the media in the construction of public belief and social change. Journal of social and political psychology, 1(1), 321-336.
Malik, A., Johri, A., Handa, R., Karbasian, H., & Purohit, H. (2018). How social media supports hashtag activism through multivocality: A case study of# ILookLikeanEngineer. First Monday.
Zikargae, M. H. (2018). Analysis of environmental communication and its implication for sustainable development in Ethiopia. Science of The Total Environment, 634, 1593-1600.