đżWild Ones #41: Environmental Communication Digest
Narrative Power Analysis + Amitav Ghosh on Climate Awareness and Action + Climate Crisis Font + The Art of Erasure EcoPoetry + More!
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If youâre new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
đ±Environmental Keyword
âNarrative Power Analysisâ
This week, Iâm still finishing up Re:Imagining Change: How to Use Story-Based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World, by Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning (2017). Last week, I took a quick look at some of the ideas behind the book and Iâm learning a lot! The communication tools the book examines arenât necessarily new, but when these tools are brought together with ideas from the grassroots social change work the Center for Story-Based Strategy has been doing over the years, it adds a whole new dimension to these old tools: communication tools like framing, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis, which Iâm looking at in todayâs digest.
To recap, the authors Reinsborough and Canning explain the idea behind story-based like this: âStory-based strategy links social movement building with an analysis of narrative power that places storytelling at the center of social change. It means, first and foremost, looking at social change strategy through the lens of narrative.â
But how should you go about âlooking through the lens of narrative?â The book devotes an entire chapter to this question by introducing a communication tool called: âNarrative Power Analysis.â Hereâs a helpful definition they give in the book:
âA narrative analysis of power encourages us to look at how meaning is operating and ask: Which stories define cultural norms? Where did these stories come from? Whose stories were ignored or erased? What new stories can we tell to more accurately describe the world we see? And, perhaps most urgently, what are the stories that can help move us toward the world we desire?â
They go on to break Narrative Power Analysis down into a practical framework with five storytelling elements:
Conflict: What environmental problem does a story identify, and how is tension and conflict created by this definition of the problem?
Characters: Can âpeople see themselves reflected in the story and choose sidesâ?
Images: âWhen a story is showing, instead of telling, it offers the audience the opportunity to draw their own conclusions.â
Foreshadowing: What hints to its outcome does a story provide? What promises about the future does a story hint at as it builds up?
Assumptions: What assumptions hold the story together? Assumptions are the âunstated part of a story that you have to accept in order to believe the story is true.â
The authors write that âThis simple framework, can be used to apply a narrative power analysis to any storyâeither for deconstructing a story you want to challenge or generating your own social change narrative.â
They also have a helpful 2-page cheatsheet explaining these storytelling elements you can download here.
On a side note, ânarrativeâ has become one of those jargony keywords in academia with a huge range of definitions and applications across disciplines, especially in communication research. But if youâre looking to take a deeper dive into the role of narratives and storytelling, especially for environmental communication, here is an interesting place to start:
Going back to the Center For Story-Based Strategy, way back in 2013 they organized a series of talks on the topic of ânarrative strategy and social change.â These videos gave me a better idea of the ideas behind Story-Based Strategy, with some useful case studies on how it is being applied.
đ What Iâm watching
Amitav Ghosh Reading & Conversation with Emily Raboteau: âAmitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement, will read and discuss the imaginative possibilities of climate awareness and action.â
đ§Â What Iâm listening to
âGretchen Miller, radio documentary-maker and podcaster, interviews Tema Milstein, co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, about the key findings from the book, and a new term of this epoch, and why it's not the Anthropocene.â
đ Tools & Resources Iâm exploring
A free font for visualizing the urgency of the climate crisis. I discovered this font over on climate writer/activist Bill Mckibbenâs newsletter. The font appears to melt depending on which decade you choose. Hereâs a description from the creators at the Finnish Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.
âThe font is intended to be used by anyone who wishes to visualize the urgency of climate change. Especially the media can use it to enhance its climate-related storytelling through illustrations and dramatizations. Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat is at the moment using the font to draw attention to its climate-related stories.â
đ° News and Events
A story from a couple of years ago, but a fascinating piece on âHumans Are Destroying Animalsâ Ancestral Knowledge: Bighorn sheep and moose learn to migrate from one another. When they die, that generational know-how is not easily replaced.â By Ed Yong in the Atlantic (from 2018). Hereâs a quote that stuck with me:
âWildlife conservation isnât just about raising the numbers on a population count. Itâs also an act of cultural preservation. When rangers stop poachers from killing an elephant matriarch, theyâre also saving her memories. When conservationists preserve routes over which bighorn sheep can travel, theyâre keeping the animalsâ traditional knowledge alive for future generations.â
Super last-minute deadline butâŠlooks interesting!: The Art of Erasure (Eco)Poetry: Edge Effects is now inviting submissions of erasure poetry. Submit yours by April 7, 2021: âWhile we will accept submissions that admire and contemplate more-than-human worlds, we also welcome submissions that broaden existing definitions of the âenvironment.â Selected poems will be published in a special mini-series to mark National Poetry Month and Earth Day.â
đ Research
Continuing on the narrative/storytelling theme today, this is a fascinating article by environmental historian Bill Cronon: A Place For Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative (pdf). In it, he explores two totally conflicting stories about a single event, the âDust Bowlâ in the 1930s.
And this chapter by Michael D. Jones and Holly Peterson gives a nice overview of narrative in climate communication: Narrative Persuasion and Storytelling as Climate Communication Strategies.
HumanâAnimal Communication. By Don Kulick, in the Annual Review of Anthropology (2017).
Iâve been following the controversy surrounding the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy since it came out last week. Here were some of my first thoughts about the film, and here are some of ideas/debates Iâve been following since:
New book Iâm hoping to read at some point: The Outlaw Ocean: Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier. By Ian Urbina.
Upcoming Zoom event (Aril 8) from Hakai Magazine: Interpreting Seaspiracy.
Seaspiracy: Should we stop eating fish? By Charles Clover in Blue Marine Foundation.
And some tweet threads about the doc Iâm thinking aboutâŠ
đĄ Ideas
Rereading this interesting, and conflictive exchange between famous animal rights advocates Peter Singer and Tom Regan from way back in 1985. The Dog in the Lifeboat: An Exchange. In The New York Review.
QIKIQTAÄ RUK: Almost an Island. By Lauren E. Oakes
with Kaisa Reese Ahluniq Kotch in Emergence Magazine. Hereâs an excerpt that Iâm thinking about:âI wondered if this was one of the songs she had sung to them, but Kaisa told me that when she sings for elders, she tends to sing in Iñupiaq. âI try to use as much Iñupiaq as possible, because you can see in their faces how it warms their hearts to hear a younger generation speaking the language that was taken away from them.â There are new leaders rising; may their voices be heard.â
Mapping the Planetary: Five Questions for Dipesh Chakrabarty. An interview by Doron Darnov in Edge Effects.
Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving the Environmental Crisis. By Elin Kelsey: Kelsey âdescribes effective campaigns to support ocean conservation, species resilience, and rewilding, demonstrating how digital conservation is helping scientists target specific problems with impressive results.â
đŹÂ Quotes Iâm thinking about
âWhat do people care most about in the world they inhabit?
How do they use and assign meaning to that world?
How does the earth respond to their actions and desires?
What sort of communities do people, plants, and animals create together?
How do people struggle with each other for control of the earth, its creatures,
and its meanings?
And on the grandest scale: what is the mutual fate of humanity and the earth?
Good questions all, and starting points for many a storyââ William Cronon, A Place For Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative.
âïžWritings from my desk
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this digest useful, please consider sharing with others who might find it interesting toođ I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest, what areas of environmental communication youâre involved in/most interest you, or anything youâd like to see more of in Wild Ones:)
đżWild Ones #41: Environmental Communication Digest
Oh wow -- that climate urgency font is really great. Who knew you could combine typography and climate activism in such a fresh, thoughtful way! A great newsletter as always, Gavin.