32 pages., via online journal., Following the March 2017 wildfire devastation in Texas, Oklahoma, and
Kansas, local chapters of the National FFA Organization actively engaged
on social media to advocate for public response to the crisis. Twenty-three
public Facebook posts from FFA chapters and affiliates demonstrate members’
engagement with agricultural issues in the United States, disrupting the
generalization that young adults are disconnected from civic affairs.
However, while Facebook served as an important platform for members’
ag-vocacy in the wake of the crisis, FFA chapter posts contain embedded
traditional rural literacies, which are reflected in members’ collective
identification with existing supporters of agricultural communities. While
FFA chapters had the potential to advocate to a broad readership, the
posts reveal the chapters’ way of reading the crisis and writing a response
to it with an insular narrative. As a result, Facebook posts that target
only limited audiences and/or appeal to readers with exclusionary collective
identification result in the failure of entities, such as local FFA chapters,
to capitalize on Facebook’s full potential as an advocacy tool to inform and
engage large public audiences.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08820
Notes:
Pages 487-509 in Rob Roggema (ed.), Agriculture in an urbanizing society volume one: proceedings of the sixth AESOP conference on sustainable food planning. United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 549 pages.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08815
Notes:
Pages 105-136 in Heike Graf (ed.), The environment in the age of the internet: activists, communication, and the digital landscape. United Kingdom: Open Book Publishers, Cambridge. 175 pages.
