The Media's Use of Nature How does the media use nature to its advantage?

Essay by magyarCollege, UndergraduateA, November 2002

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The Media's Use of Nature

The media, through its use of pictures and eye-catching phrases, uses nature to its advantage, encouraging both positive and negative attitudes that appeal to a variety of people. While advertisements promote positive attitudes, such as freedom, adventure, and romance, toward nature, newspapers and magazine articles promote negative attitudes, such as threatened freedom and excessive control. Because these specific attitudes have a great appeal on people, the advertisements succeed in selling their products, vacations, etc., and the newspaper and magazine articles succeed in informing readers about their surroundings, which encourage them to do something about certain situations.

The advertisement for the Holland America's Alaska cruise ship encourages an adventurous and fun attitude toward nature. When readers first take a glimpse at this advertisement, the first thing to notice is the picture. The picture, taking up two-thirds of the page, includes scenery of mountains covered with snow, greenery, and a grand ship on water.

Even though the picture does not encourage much adventure, it attracts a lot of attention, and most readers are soon interested in the advertisement and as a result, they begin to read the text. The text clues them in on a few of the guaranteed adventures they will receive if they decide to take the cruise. In the beginning, the advertisement mentions how one may pan for "Klondike gold", watch "Tlingit artists at work" and view "grizzlies in the wild". These few activities, along with other "adventures that are exclusive" to Holland America, such as "floating on the Yukon", searching the "tundra for wildlife" and watching "orcas at play" encourage most adventure loving readers to purchase tickets for the cruise. The advertisement sums up its guaranteed fun and adventure with its package deal of wilderness, wildlife, history, and lore.

The advertisement...