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Outreach communication by grassroots environmental organizations

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Date Issued:
2010
Summary:
The negative impact of human activities on the Earth's ecosystems has gained more attention in the last few decades; in turn interest and scholarship in the area of environmental rhetoric has also grown. This case study provides an in-depth examination of outreach material generated by Tampa Bay Watch to determine if grassroots environmental organizations are using rhetorical appeals that recent scholarly literature argues are ineffective. Alternative rhetorical appeals are also examined for their persuasiveness. Using an open coding approach, the analysis finds that the organization used persuasive appeals which varied from those predicted by the literature, and that a combination of appeals produced better results that any one appeal alone. The group also varied its appeals based on the type of outreach. The study reveals that qualitative study of one organization's persuasive appeals renders more nuanced findings than have quantitative studies of multiple organizations or analyses of single rhetorical documents.
Title: Outreach communication by grassroots environmental organizations: a case study.
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Name(s): Estep, Kimberly L.
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 2010
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Physical Form: electronic
Extent: xiii, 165 p. : ill. (some col.)
Language(s): English
Summary: The negative impact of human activities on the Earth's ecosystems has gained more attention in the last few decades; in turn interest and scholarship in the area of environmental rhetoric has also grown. This case study provides an in-depth examination of outreach material generated by Tampa Bay Watch to determine if grassroots environmental organizations are using rhetorical appeals that recent scholarly literature argues are ineffective. Alternative rhetorical appeals are also examined for their persuasiveness. Using an open coding approach, the analysis finds that the organization used persuasive appeals which varied from those predicted by the literature, and that a combination of appeals produced better results that any one appeal alone. The group also varied its appeals based on the type of outreach. The study reveals that qualitative study of one organization's persuasive appeals renders more nuanced findings than have quantitative studies of multiple organizations or analyses of single rhetorical documents.
Identifier: 701511178 (oclc), 2975243 (digitool), FADT2975243 (IID), fau:3571 (fedora)
Note(s): by Kimberly L. Estep.
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010.
Includes bibliography.
Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subject(s): Communication in the enviornmental sciences -- Case studies
Ecocriticism -- Case studies
Enviornmental policy -- United States -- Case studies
Green movement -- United States -- Case studies
Discourse analysis -- Case studies
Held by: FBoU FAUER
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2975243
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU