Shark Conservation

 

Shark conservation is a well talked about topic, but still requires a lot of attention and change. Sharks are an integral part of the ocean's precious ecosystem, with their presence often indicating the healthiness of coral reefs. They are essential for our survival but are disappearing from our oceans at a worryingly rapid pace, mostly because of unethical fishing practices, finning, overfishing, etc. 

 In this project, I had two main goals. One: Effectively communicate with people around my age, bridging the gap between adult conservationists and those of us from a younger generation who want to make a difference. Two: Communicate lesser-known aspects of shark conservation, providing a more in-depth explanation of how important sharks are to us, and how finning is not the only problem they face. 

I created a blog on Tumblr, as part of my effort to connect with a like-minded, younger crowd. Initially, I was going to take a more formal approach to my writing, but then I realized that in today's day and age, our attention spans are relatively low and we are drawn to images, visual rhetoric, and conversational language. Therefore, I made my language more interactive, less formal, and used plenty of pictures in my posts. I also made an Instagram account, but in hindsight, I would choose a different platform as Instagram is primarily for visuals and pictures, and I did need to have quite a bit of writing in my posts as well. 

I applied three main concepts from our class. Hypermediacy, Framing, and Clicktivism. Tumblr enables the writer to add links to articles within their posts, so if I were to write about shark based products used in cosmetics, I could apply a link to the article within that block of text, and all the reader would have to do is click on the text to open up that article and get more information. In terms of framing, I chose a slightly softer approach using apocalyptic rhetoric, which often warns "of impending and severe ecological crisis" (Pezzullo and Cox, 2017). I chose to display the dangers that reducing dwindling shark numbers posed, both to humans and animals alike, and gave examples from both my personal life as well as information I found online in order to get my point across. Finally, I included several petitions from bottom-up sites such as change.org in my posts, each one relevant to the topic covered in that particular post, which encouraged clicktivism. Possibly one of the most useful of all social media campaigns, clicktivism is incredibly helpful in making a difference. 

This project allowed me to think about what exactly I wanted to communicate to my audience about shark conservation and, more importantly, why. I hope to carry this project on and make it bigger, spanning more social media platforms and hopefully gaining more traction over time. I have big plans for this campaign, and I'm quite excited to see where this takes me. 

https://jawsomesharks.tumblr.com/

The above is a link to my Tumblr account, should anyone be interested in reading it! I'm also including a few links to articles that I found very helpful in my research.

https://www.earth.com/news/sharks-important-deserve-protections/

https://pacificwild.org/news/sharks-are-the-sign-of-a-healthy-marine-ecosystem/

https://www.robstewartsharkwaterfoundation.org/articles/shark-squalene-in-cosmetics

And here is a petition to stop scientists from using shark- based squalene in COVID-19 vaccines.

https://www.change.org/p/us-fda-food-and-drug-administration-of-the-united-states-of-america-stop-using-sharks-in-covid-19-vaccine-use-existing-sustainable-options?redirect=false

 

CITATIONS:

Pezzullo, P. C., & Cox, J. R. (2018). Environmental communication and the public sphere. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.