As Dunaway argued in his article, images are prominent and powerful mediators of our culture's beliefs about issues like race, class, gender, politics, and sustainability. Analyzing images, then, can help us gain a clearer understanding of the role media and organizations play in forming and perpetuating Americans' views of environmentalism and sustainability. For your final paper, you will analyze an image that makes a statement or argument about the sustainability issue you focused your lit review and argument-driven article on. The image may be an advertisement, a flyer, a sign, a poster, a magazine cover, etc. Your analysis should be a rich one since you will have a greater understanding of the larger issue(s) surrounding the image's message(s) after researching and writing your literature review and article. Your analysis will focus on what messages the image sends to its target audience about environmentalism or sustainability, how the artifact sends those messages (the rhetorical tactics used to persuade the audience), and how those messages may affect the audience's beliefs and actions.
To Write Your Essay:
• Be sure to describe your image for your audience before you analyze it. Assume, here, that your audience is not looking at your image and needs to know what type of image it is (ad, poster, flyer, etc.), what it looks like, what it says, and where you found it.
• Make an argument about what messages you think the image is sending its audience about environmentalism and/or sustainability. Is it saying something about who is responsible for the problem and/or for solving the problem? Is it saying something about the consequences of environmental irresponsibility? Is it saying something about the issue in relation to race, class, or gender? Is it arguing for or against a particular practice or product related to sustainability? Etc.?
• To support your argument, tell your audience how the image is sending these messages. What rhetorical tactics are the creators of the image using to send these messages? How do the visual images, the text, the arrangement, etc. help send a particular message?
Is it employing ethos, logos, and/or pathos to persuade its audience? If so, how?
• Discuss the implications of the messages the image is sending. How might the messages affect the audience's beliefs or actions?
Throughout the essay, think about how you might draw upon your larger understanding of the issues at hand in the image based on your work for the previous two papers. Will that knowledge help you understand and interpret the image's messages? Can you use it to engage your readers in the introduction and/or contextualize your analysis in the conclusion?
Grading Criteria:
A strong essay will...
• Contain a brief introductory description of the image.
• Contain a clear, well-supported argument about what messages the image sends and how it sends that message.
• Discuss the implications of this message for the target audience.
• Draw upon your understanding of the issues of environmentalism/sustainability based on your work for the previous two papers in
order to bolster your analysis of the image.
• Include an engaging and thoughtful introduction and conclusion.
• Progress logically and smoothly with appropriate transitions indicating connections between ideas.
• Make appropriate use of sentence structure, word choice, grammar, spelling, and punctuation that enables rather than hinders clear and effective communication.
• Meet the minimum page requirement of 3-4 double-spaced pages.
three points should be mentioned on the presentation
1 what is the image arguing?
2 how is it making the argument?( visual text audience)
3 what are the implications of the images on the audience?