The essay is the most exhaustive, complete document of your findings. While only 8 pages in length, you should attempt to give your reader a sense of the rhetorical situation across multiple media platforms. Your emphasis should not be on “proving” one side or the other— after all, climate change is real. Rather, you should attempt to understand the logical and rhetorical positions taking by all sides of a debate, and then offer a compelling synthesis of the data.
Bibliography: The bibliography will serve as a record of each groups’ collective research. As you begin, you should keep in mind three guidelines: breadth of media, diversity of opinion, and impact. At minimum, your bibliography should contain 10 items.
Breadth of media: The rhetorical and discursive strategies central to environmental activism and policy appear in films, novels, poems, blogs, newspapers, pamphlets, tweets, Facebook posts— the list goes on. Your bibliography should be attentive to how each of these media offer different rhetorical opportunities. At minimum, your bibliography should contain items from five (5) different media (e.g. at least one item from a Blog, a New York Times article, a documentary film, a poem, and a white paper from a think-tank).
Diversity of opinion: This class begins from the premise—supported by the overwhelming majority of scientists— that climate change is real, and human caused. Because this class is about the cultural construction and rhetorical deployment of a diversity of environmental views and claims, your bibliography should reflect this political spectrum. While it is not necessary to capture the entire spectrum of opinion on, say, solar energy, your bibliography should at minimum have items that are for and against solar.
Impact: When selecting items to include on the bibliography, be attentive to how they have impacted the broader discussion. For instance, if you are want to select a “Twitter war” between an activists and deniers, a Twitter account with many followers (say, Bernie Sanders or Earth First! combating Breitbart News) is better than your friend arguing with their uncle.