As part of the last leg of the class, we looked at what makes a video effective and how to create similar videos. Video and media have played a big part in environmental awareness campaigns and overall environmental discourse for a long time. The obvious reason for this trend is that environmental issues are very visually stimulating. Pictures of the dying great barrier reef or of other destruction of natural environments are commonplace in social media relevant to environmental issues. For instance, many people can probably recall at least one video they have watched or at least glanced at on Facebook or Twitter that basically detail the harsh environmental impacts and realities of the human actions in some part of the world. In fact, many of these videos follows a similar format and strategy of many of the videos we have watched for class. Most of the videos on social media that I watched about environmental problems are usually short, around 1-5 minutes and all focus on a specific topic within the broader umbrella of climate change and environmental concern and conservation. Moreover, from what I noticed from in class and social media videos is that most videos, across all topics, seem to fall into two main categories in terms of overall strategy and emotional appeal.

The first of these categories is usually characterized by a slow pace and soft tone of a voice that I almost feel gives a sense of nostalgia. These videos usually are mellow and perhaps less proactive in trying to accomplish a goal. To me, the purpose of this slow pace and soft, warmly-lit tone is that I think it helps people to relax and think more deeply about the topic of interest in order to feel more logically and emotionally connected to the issue at hand. For instance, the “Last Letters” video we watched about the sinking of a Korean school field trip boat is a good example of the pace and tone even if it doesn’t really have a strong purpose. This genre seems to elicit guilt and sadness from the viewer that hopefully will translate into a bigger personal stake with the topic of interest. Furthermore, it helps to calm the watcher and expose them to an issue they probably don’t know that much about.

The second in the category is what we call the “shock doctrine”. As the video we watched for class, “The Shock Doctrine” points out, this style is usually categorized by a very shocking and unbelievable event or statistic at the beginning of the video and then followed by the “meat” of the argument. As we have learned, the shock of the initial statistic or event makes people more susceptible to listening to what they want and more likely to want to help. This is definitely the more common theme for videos about environmental concerns as there are a plethora of shocking statistics that are often brought up. In fact, I would even argue that this method has become too commonplace in mainstream discourse and awareness strategies for climate change and environmental concerns. Judging from social media and personal experience it seems that people have almost become desensitized to this type of shock doctrine – its overuse has led to its being not so shocking. This is one of the main challenges when working with climate change.