Activity 6: Your understanding of public service announcements

Many public service announcements (PSAs) are advertisements meant to encourage or discourage particular behaviors (such as voting or littering) or to call an audience to action (for example, contributing to a charitable organization).

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Choose a nonprofit or community action or awareness organization. Find a campaign that the group has run or is running, and identify at least three different campaign components (such as a poster, a radio spot, a television PSA, a Web-based PSA, an interactive game). Analyze each of the three pieces, describing which modes are used, how the modes are layered together (or not), and how well you think each piece serves its purpose.

Some historical and contemporary campaigns you might look at include Rosie the Riveter, wildfire prevention, ready.gov, Make a Wish Foundation, and the Humane Society. You might also focus on the World Wildlife Fund campaign mentioned in the text.

Question

Go to related section: Analyzing multimodal texts