By Anna Linn, Environmental Science & Sociology Majors, Mentors: Adrian Oglesby & John Fleck
Apart from being the most essential resource to life on Earth, water holds immense cultural and spiritual value across the American West. However, the consequences of climate change and unsustainable human practices have resulted in a threat to the resource within the region. My communication project models the campaign of a fictional political party, The Party to Protect OUR Water. Working with research done by Adrian Oglesby and John Fleck, I created a series of posters that represented various issues with water in the West. The posters themselves are simple, meant to make the viewer consider how they approach water in their everyday life and encourage them to look further into the subject. Every poster is presented in both English and Spanish to make them more accessible and effective with a wider range of people. After all, water is vital to the entire nation regardless of any demographic factor and everyone deserves equal access to any information that might impact it. Each poster includes a QR code that takes the viewer to a pamphlet describing in detail the meaning of the graphic – both in a scientific and social sense. The pamphlet also contains links for one to find the contacts of their local and regional representatives in the government. It is important that people know their voices and opinions are not disposable to those that are meant to act in their best interest. This communication project was focused on making water issues at every scale more accessible to the general public. The more informed a society is about their resources and the powers that govern them, the better they can preserve these resources for generations to come.
