Greenpeace Save the Arctic Campaign - Report Example

GREENPEACE SAVE THE ARCTIC CAMPAIGN al Affiliation) Key words: Arctic circle, climate Introduction The climate of the world is changing, especially in the Arctic Circle because of global warming (Boyce and Lewis, 2009). Changes in the Arctic Circle affect most areas around the globe not only the local individuals. The Arctic Circle plays an important role in the global climate and the Arctic Circle affects most areas. Increase in greenhouse gases warms the Arctic Circle and directly affect the climate of most regions in the world. Information from numerous sources indicates that there is a change in the climate of most regions in the world. Human activities play a vital role in the increase of greenhouse gases in the globe. Burning of fossil fuel and clearing of land are some of the major causes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Most plants and animals do not flourish in the conditions of the Arctic (DeSombre, 2006). On the contrary, some plants and animals have adapted to the conditions of the Arctic Circle. Green Peace is an international nongovernmental organization that focuses on environmental protection. The goal of Greenpeace is to ensure that the earth has the ability to take care of its present and future generations. Climate change, overfishing on international waters and deforestation are some of the major issues that concern of Greenpeace. The organization uses non-violent confrontations to create awareness of matters affecting the environment (Cottle, 2009). They expose the threats to the environment and seek solutions to the current problems that affect the environment. Numerous organization that concern them with improving conditions of the environment fund Greenpeace. The individual support from various stakeholders makes the organization independent. The organization is a nongovernmental and any government, corporations do not fund it. Funding from individual supporters and foundations helps the organization to operate independently from other organizations. It screens its entire donor to ensure that they do not have any political background. It is because they do not want to get involved with politicians. Politicians tend to influence organization to work according to their views. Their campaign strategies involve taking care of the environment through democratic principles. They seek for solutions that develop global social equity in environmental improvement. In addition to, the organization came into existence around 1971.Currently; it is present around 40 countries across the world and has more than one million supporters. It aims to prevent pollution and protect biodiversity around the world. It has numerous strategies that it plans to put into action to achieve their objectives. On June 21 2012, the organization launched Save the Arctic Circle campaign. The campaign aims to collect 1million signatures for the protection of the Arctic Circle (Cottle, 2009). Aim of the study Greenpeace got inspiration from philosophers, who made the connection of the human mind and its natural surroundings (Cottle, 2003). There were proposals that had relations with the movements of the environmentalists. The main aim of the Greenpeace movement is to save the Arctic from extinction, which can lead to devastating effects. The recent changes in climate led to the acceleration of melting in the Arctic Circle. This ended up changing the climate of most regions in the world. The organization plays a major part in restoring normal conditions in the ice desert (Nakashima, 2009). It plays a social-political role in restoring the normal conditions in the Arctic Circle. The study also aims at investigating the strategies Greenpeace uses to communicate their messages. The study looks at the technology behind the effective communication between various departments and stakeholders in Greenpeace. Structure of the organization The structure of the organization has helped it to achieve some of their objectives in the recent past (Cottle, 2003). Setting up campaigns, opening new offices, are some of the strategies that they use to have an influence on a large number of individuals. They have representatives in most of the countries and they attend Annual general meetings of the organizations. The board of directors consists of seven members and it is responsible for the responsible for the activities of the organizations. It is responsible for guiding Greenpeace through its daily environmental non-violence operations of the organizations. The mission and vision of the organization is to protect the environment against pollution and other related factors. The structure of Greenpeace allows the operational managers to use diverse methods of communication. The diverse methods permit Greenpeace to reach their set objectives effectively. Media and Communication techniques and technologies The mission and vision of Greenpeace is to protect the environment at all costs. The media play an important role in the protection of the environment. Public communication is one of the strategies that greenhouse uses to reach a wider audience. Public communication informs individuals of the behaviors of various corporations towards protecting the environment  (Cottle and Lester, 2011). The use of organized communication in different communication channels helps Greenpeace. The campaigns of Greenpeace help the international organization reach their audience. The organization has three main strategies that they use. The strategies are direct action, political lobbying, and public education. Direct action involves the use of non-violent initiative to address the issues of the environment. The direct action mobilizes the public to obtain an opinion on the matters that affect the Arctic Circle. The organization uses media to try to influence individuals towards achieving their set objectives (Cottle and Lester, 2011). Current trends have enabled the corporation to adapt Neuro-campaigning as one of the communication techniques. It involves giving individuals an insight of the occurrence of certain things. There have been significant breakthroughs of how our brains work and it has led to the shifts in the techniques used to persuade individuals (Castells, 2012). Leaderless movements are some of the techniques used by the organization to pass information to individuals. Direct Action Greenpeace movements use direct action as a media technique to pass information to the relevant individuals. The direct action is a technique that gets the attention of the media in matters of environmental conservation. It uses non-violent techniques to obtain the opinion of the public. This action will attract the attention of the media, which will lead to media coverage of the situations. Media coverage of the direct will ensure that information reaches a wide audience. A strategy leads to information reaching the most important individuals that are involved in decision-making. Public Confrontation. The Greenpeace organization uses public confrontation to communicate critical things to the public. Public confrontation involves arguments that have a direct impact on the public because it creates awareness to the public. Current information flow allows individuals to access the media via numerous means. In addition to, the publics attention is important to Greenpeace because they create awareness of important matters. The best strategy to reach the attention of the public is through the media. The media creates objects in a way that it piles pressure on the public to take necessary action. The public is in a position in which they have to take action for the matters that the media has brought to their attention. The media creates pictures that shape the strategy of Greenpeace organization. The images and advertisements leave a photogenic memory of citizens. The Greenpeace organization succeeds in obtaining justice for their public confrontation through the media. Educating the public A communication technique involves educating the public on the importance of various elements. Educating the public involves activities like providing background information on numerous factors of interest. Educating public provides vital information to them to make their own decisions. The Greenpeace organization uses educating the public as a communication technique. Education of the public creates awareness to the stakeholders on the action they should take to improve the condition of the Arctic Circle. The action of the public would be to provide financial assistance to help improve the conditions of the Arctic Circle (De Jong, Shaw and Stammers, 2005). A strategy works instantly on the perception of the public. It educates the public through social media site like Face book, Twitter, YouTube and Google + (Curran, Fenton and Freedman, 2012). These social media sites help the organization to convince the public to participate in taking the car on the environment. The sites help Greenpeace to educate the public on the need to protect the Arctic Circle. Statistics indicate that individuals respond to the advertisement of Greenpeace media on the social media. Educating the public positively influences the attitude of the public towards protecting the environment. The protection of the environment is mainly through adopting agendas that will help conserve the environment Reflection of the Greenpeace Campaign "Save the Arctic Circle" Greenpeace is an internationally recognized not for profit organization that has dealt with the conservation of the environment. The fast growing mass media has opened new opportunities for environmental activists voice their concerns. Save the Arctic Circle, campaign is integrated news that combines the online media with traditional forms of media. The campaign uses the internet to achieve its set goals and objectives. The internet has helped the campaign to mobilize activists around the word to come together for a common purpose. Greenpeace is the ideal organizations to enable the campaign, "Save the Arctic Circle" achieve its set objectives. The organization has a website that has been running since 1994 which played a hand in the success of the "Save the Arctic Circle campaign". The social sites link their audience with the website; it helps to disseminate information to the necessary individuals. The use of the website and online media created awareness to the United Nations. The campaigns were successful because they got the backing of the United Nations. Politicians and celebrities were among the individuals who backed the vision of the campaign. Both politicians and celebrities were urging their fans to sign the petition of saving the Arctic Circle. The campaign joined forces with other related organizations to stop the seismic testing of the Canadian Arctic Circle (Wilcox and Reber, 2013). Best Buy is one of the largest electronic retailers in the world and it announced it would protect the Canada Forest. The retailing shop made a commitment to improve the standards of purchasing. The standards made particular attention to the endangered forests and human rights. On October 2014, the campaign ends its 50-year link with LEGO (Wilcox and Reber, 2013). Lego made a statement to decline any commitments with Shell. One million individuals signed a petition. Ethical issues in the Arctic Circle is one of the main reasons why Greenpeace is not encouraging drilling of oil in the Arctic Circle. Drilling of oil companies in the Arctic Circle will cause major harm on the Arctic Circle. Pollution in the Arctic Circle will increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the area. Increase of the greenhouse gases causes global warming and melts the ice in the area. Increase in water levels in the Arctic Circle causes a change in the climate in the region. Target audience of the campaign The campaign was to target individuals around the region of Arctic Circle because they are the ones who have direct relation with the region. Oil companies were targets of the Save the Arctic Circle campaign (Delaney, 2013). It is because they had direct connection with the Arctic Circle due to the oil deposits in the region. In addition to targeting the audience, the campaign contributed to the public sphere due to its attraction o public figures. The campaign made nation interested in the fight against polluting and destroying the Arctic Circle. Success of the "Save The Arctic Circle" campaign The campaign was successful in the delivery of the message of conserving the Arctic Circle to the target audience. The campaign was a success because of the increase of online media to increase the intensity message circulation (Delaney, 2013). Celebrities and political leaders took part in the campaign indicating how successful it was. The fans of political leaders and celebrities had to support the campaign. Use of social media increased social awareness among the public individuals to support the campaign and made it successful. Greenpeace managed to collect more than one million votes, which indicates how it was successful. Imagery in "Save the Arctic Circle" campaign Imagery is the use of figurative speech in the work of literature and its use creates images and pictures in the mind of the audience (Wilcox and Reber, 2013). In the campaign, imagery helps the audience to create vivid pictures of how climate change would destroy the Arctic Circle. The activists in charge of the "Save the Arctic Circle" campaign created emotional resonance. In the campaign, they referred to the polar bears as lost which creates a photogenic memory in the mind of the audience. References Bell, S. and McGillivray, D. 2008. Environmental law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boyce, T. and Lewis, J. 2009. Climate change and the media. New York: Peter Lang. Castells, M. 2012. Networks of outrage and hope. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Cottle, S. 2003. News, public relations and power. London: Sage. Cottle, S. 2009. Global crisis reporting. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Cottle, S. and Lester, L. 2011. 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