The Department of Technology, Culture and Society at NYU's Polytechnic School of Engineering cordially invites you to join us for "Environmental Activism in the Digital Age: Saving the World in Bits and Bytes."

Recent years have seen an explosion of digital media strategies that are designed to educate and to drive behavior change and public policy on environmental issues. Environmental-themed films have become extremely popular--think of Avatar, Wall-E, The Garden, Food Inc., The Cove, and many others. Such films now incorporate social media campaigns to prompt social action. At the same time, numerous environmental apps encourage behavior such as using public transit, reducing energy use at home, and monitoring environmental pollution. Green games educate players about issues such as waste reduction and water conservation. On-line web sites and social media campaigns are used by national and local environmental organizations to educate and encourage individuals to take action. The goal of these digital media strategies is to generate individual behavior change and to shape public action. These digital media strategies vary widely in their impacts. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, for example, is widely credited with changing Americans' attitudes about global warming. Many other efforts have had limited or no lasting effect.

This conference will examine what "works" and what does not "work" in terms of digital media strategies that aim to educate and to impact environmental issues. The conference will bring together social scientists with expertise on behavior change and environmental education, with digital media activists and artists, to address these issues. The goal of the conference is to educate participants on how to produce digital media strategies that will have significant impact on environmental issues.

Beth Karlin of the University of California at Irvine discusses her research on energy behaviors. She suggests specific appeals that may be more effective in increasing curtailment behaviors, others that are more successful in targeting efficiency behaviors as well as interventions that could impact both behavior dimensions. To find out more about the Garrison Institute:

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