FRS 002V — Sec. 001 — (2 units) — CRN 65548 — T 3:10-5:00pm — 245 AOB4
The Argument Over the Environment

Instructor: John Theobald, Department of Communication, College of Letters and Science

Description: For several decades communication campaigns related to ecological issues have been waged throughout the world. The campaigns cover an almost unimaginable scope. They have extended to every region of the planet. They have involved land, air, and water. They have involved growth, energy, tourism, recreation, agriculture, urbanization, economic development, and much more. They have involved the usual suspects of preservationist and developmental economic interests. They have involved strange alliances of individuals and groups that never imagined working together. This seminar will examine some of these campaigns. The theme of the proposed FRS is public argument and environmental policy. Course material will include messages from organizations with a position on ecological management as well as academic and journalistic observations about the public campaigns. As a communication-related seminar, focus will be on the argument that relates to the environment rather than the environment itself.

Format: Participants in the proposed seminar will become acquainted with some of the advocacy fault lines dividing developmental/preservational and other positions on the issues. The primary goal of the seminar will be to enhance students' ability to analyze public communication campaigns. The general design is 1) brief lecture/video/discussion, 2) small group projects and presentation, and 3) paper research and writing. The first part of the course is designed to introduce students to the subject. The small group part is designed to encourage students to analyze issues associated with the subject. The paper will be an independent case study focusing on a specific environmental campaign to be chosen by the student. The proposed seminar is a 2-unit course. Students will attend a 2-hour seminar once per week for the 10 week duration of the course. In the first part of the course, described above, students will be expected to spend approximately 1-2 hours per week reading the assigned material, one hour per week developing a proposal for a course paper, and one hour per week working with other students on a small group presentation related to a course topic. By the later weeks of the seminar, it is expected that students, in regular consultation with the instructor, will spend their time writing a paper that may be an analysis of current thought on environmental campaigns or the student's analysis of a specific campaign. Students will submit a one-to-two page paper proposal on the sixth or seventh seminar meeting. The paper, which will be due on the last day of the course, is expected to be 7-10 pages in length. Grading: There will be two grade components to the course that will be equally weighted. They will include: 1) a participation grade that will be based on regular class contributions and, in particular, presentation of individual research work, and 2) a course paper as described above.

About the Instructor: John Theobald is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Communication, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. His primary course offerings include The Media Industry, News Policies and Practices, Media Analysis, and Media Effects. These courses include many themes, among them: media ownership, social consequences of technology, globalization, media and global security, news bias, journalism practices, commercial effects of contemporary media, media and ecological systems, and a range of politically-related themes. Recent research interests include college orientation for high school students, ecological communication campaigns, and the selling of the tourism industry in the western United States. John has been a frequent commentator on media-related issues for print, radio, and television news agencies. He studied at UCLA, San Diego State University, and the University of Texas at Austin.