Stop a random person on the street. Ask them for the first thing that pops into their head when they think of Alberta’s oilsands.

Unless they’re an industry analyst or an over-enthused real estate agent turned corporate shill, chances are that they’ll describe either buffalo roaming on a restored tailings pond or helicopter shots of open-pit mining. Individuals are more likely to describe a visual element of the resource as opposed to, say, the barrels per day of oil or annual megatonnes of greenhouse gasses the region produces.

It’s this notion — that pictures, videos and other media representations often have extremely powerful influence on discourse about the oilsands — that compelled Patrick McCurdy to launch the MediaToil project.

“The premise of my work is that media is a site of social struggles,” McCurdy, an associate professor in the department of communications at the University of Ottawa, told DeSmog Canada. “It’s a battle for our imaginations and what we think about a certain topic and the actions we’re willing to take. I wanted to try to map that.”

Working with a two-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanity Research Council, McCurdy and his team identified all the different stakeholders involved in the oilsands (of which there are many: corporations, industry associations, media, environmental non-profits, Indigenous groups), combed their websites and created an Excel database with the links.

Online Oilsands Campaigns Can Disappear from Web

McCurdy said one of the key challenges his team encountered was the lack of digital posterity of online oilsands campaigns and ads.

Unlike analyzing something like historic tobacco advertising — which is often still available via microfilm or print — many digital campaigns are no longer live, meaning companies and industry organizations can effectively eliminate controversial points in history from the record.

Take the 2010 television campaign by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) which compared the consistency of oilsands tailings waste to yogurt: the Sierra Club of Canada filed a complaint to Advertising Standards Canada, arguing that it misrepresented the toxic nature of tailings. CAPP eventually revised the ad, removing the yogurt reference.

“But this ad no longer exists,” McCurdy said.

“The challenge is it has an impact on the public imagination. Of course, the Advertising Council ruled in CAPP’s favour, but no matter — if you wanted to for your own interest watch this ad, it doesn’t exist. It’s been removed.”

New Public Database Charts Decades of #Oilsands Advertising #cdnpoli #bcpoli #ableg #oilandgas https://t.co/g5si0itH5B

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 13, 2016

Rise of ‘Apocalyptic Imagery’ in Oilsands Campaigns

Despite such challenges, he says it’s possible to detect trends in communication strategies.

Back in the 1980s, depictions of the oilsands emphasized “images of accomplishment by industry: man over nature, ability to make money from dirt,” McCurdy said.

But that kind of rhetoric saw a decline in the early 2000s, when companies like Suncor attempted to balance community responsibility with environmental burdens (which McCurdy calls “caring for toads”) and didn’t engage in the “trend ad warfare” we see now.

Everything changed following the rise of “apocalyptic imagery” in 2008 and 2009 by organizations like Greenpeace, which executed huge banner drops and other image-heavy events. (The Syncrude duck disaster of 2008 also provided visual fodder for organizations unsatisfied with the province’s approach to environmental regulations.)

Industry and its network of associations first responded with photos of smiling CEOs backdropped with lush forests and freshwater. But they quickly ditched that strategy, opting for what we’re stuck with now: lifestyle rhetoric, boosterism and appeals to potential supporters instead of engagements with critics.

Screenshots from Canada Action, left, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers Raise Your Hand campaign, right.

Meanwhile, Indigenous communities and organizations tend to be significantly underrepresented, with the exceptions of media events like the Tarsands Healing Walk and appearances in ads by environmental organizations like WWF or Greenpeace.

“Looking at these ads certainly tracks and captures these shifts in strategies,” McCurdy said. “For me, the value of tracking this over time is you can look at what are the political decisions that have been made, what are the milestones in the timeline of the oilsands that relate to this?”

70-Page Comic Book To Be Published Alongside Database

But McCurdy wanted to broaden the project even beyond the database and the peer-reviewed papers that will eventually come, as it was important to think of another way to engage the public given the debate currently resembles a “red team vs. blue team thing.”

For that, he contacted Nicole Marie Burton and Hugh Goldring of Ad Astra Comix on Twitter to create a 70-page graphic novel loosely based on the themes of the MediaToil project.

Goldring said the work will follow the experience of two young photographers in Edmonton that work for advertising agencies representing “opposite sides.”

“It tracks their conflict of conscience,” he said. “The whole reason we picked people in advertising in the first place was that it provided a way to look at the production of these images.”

Goldring added that while the database of images is important, it’s McCurdy’s work that applies the larger contextual frame.

“Patrick’s work in a larger sense is in the way the images are produced and what the larger semiotic meaning or context of the work that’s being put out by these ad agencies is.”

Burton said the graphic novel will feature a fair bit of ambiguity, and is ultimately intended to help provoke conversation and provide discussion topics for bigger picture questions about the framing and discourse of the oilsands.

The comic will come out sometime in 2017, wbe available for free online as a downloadable PDF. In the meantime, McCurdy hopes that the public will point out “blind spots” in the database and explore the ads and fact sheets further.

Energy East Debate Further Emphasizes Need for Analysis of Visual Rhetoric

And while data collection was only conducted up until 2015, the goal is to continue it. Especially given the country’s increased focus on TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline. McCurdy said it’s “a true battle over statistics” that’s falsely presented as a national unification project that will reduce the country’s dependency on foreign imports.

A popular image that’s made its way around social media features a series of flags of countries that Canada currently imports oil from, with the implication that such imports would cease with the construction of Energy East. But recent reports suggest that a great majority of oil shipped east via the pipeline would actually be exported to the United States.

It’s these kinds of projects — along with the way that solar and wind technologies are visually communicated by fossil fuel companies — that McCurdy hopes to explore during his 2017 sabbatical.

“I think it’s time we actually try to pick apart this persuasive communication which is a proxy, very much, for public debate,” he says.

“It really clouds our ability to think critically about these things and becomes a back-and-forth. That’s part of the reason for the comic, and part of the reason for the database is to have some stuff out there for the public as opposed to just tucking stuff away in peer-reviewed academic journals.”

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This is guest post by Dr. Patrick Stokes, professor of philosophy at Deakin University. It originally appeared on The Conversation and is republished here with permission.

Every year, I try to do at least two things with my students at least once. First, I make a point of addressing them as “philosophers” – a bit cheesy, but hopefully it encourages active learning.

Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”

A bit harsh? Perhaps, but philosophy teachers owe it to our students to teach them how to construct and defend an argument – and to recognize when a belief has become indefensible.

The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.

Firstly, what’s an opinion?

Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “1+1=2” or “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views “respected.”

Meryl Dorey is the leader of the Australian Vaccination Network, which despite the name is vehemently anti-vaccine. Ms. Dorey has no medical qualifications, but argues that if Bob Brown is allowed to comment on nuclear power despite not being a scientist, she should be allowed to comment on vaccines. But no-one assumes Dr. Brown is an authority on the physics of nuclear fission; his job is to comment on the policy responses to the science, not the science itself.

So what does it mean to be “entitled” to an opinion?

If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven.

But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred.

On Monday, the ABC’s Mediawatch program took WIN-TV Wollongong to task for running a story on a measles outbreak which included comment from – you guessed it – Meryl Dorey. In a response to a viewer complaint, WIN said that the story was “accurate, fair and balanced and presented the views of the medical practitioners and of the choice groups.” But this implies an equal right to be heard on a matter in which only one of the two parties has the relevant expertise. Again, if this was about policy responses to science, this would be reasonable. But the so-called “debate” here is about the science itself, and the “choice groups” simply don’t have a claim on air time if that’s where the disagreement is supposed to lie.

Mediawatch host Jonathan Holmes was considerably more blunt: “there’s evidence, and there’s bulldust,” and it’s no part of a reporter’s job to give bulldust equal time with serious expertise.

The response from anti-vaccination voices was predictable. On the Mediawatch site, Ms. Dorey accused the ABC of “openly calling for censorship of a scientific debate.” This response confuses not having your views taken seriously with not being allowed to hold or express those views at all – or to borrow a phrase from Andrew Brown, it “confuses losing an argument with losing the right to argue.” Again, two senses of “entitlement” to an opinion are being conflated here.

So next time you hear someone declare they’re entitled to their opinion, ask them why they think that. Chances are, if nothing else, you’ll end up having a more enjoyable conversation that way.

Image Credit: Marc Wathieu via Flickr

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I was reading this prevalent and interesting article last week that was brought to my attention by one of my wonderful Twitter fans (@andrea_shippey).

I got to the end of the fifth paragraph where the article states: “Alberta’s NDP leader also slammed the Tory government’s $30,000 weekend advertisement in the New York Times making the argument for TransCanada’s 1,800-kilometre pipeline as ‘misleading greenwash.’”

And thought to myself…and I quote: “Yep, I like it.” Clicking the proverbial “like” button in my mind, I nearly closed the page.

I had read five paragraphs of twenty-three, concluded that I agreed with the sentiments of the article and, thus, felt I was finished with it.

It dawned on me, as my cursor hung in wait to move me onto the next article of interest, that this is one of the troubles with our new social media world. We are not reading to learn, anymore, we are reading to approve or disapprove, agree or disagree, “like” or not like, as if that is the ultimate purpose of reading anything in the first place. 

As it turns out, the following eighteen paragraphs contained information that was interesting and pertinent to me.

I learned that politicians in Canada are not arguing over whether or not it is okay for Canada to be producing the world’s dirtiest oil at a time when we are on the brink of all-out climate crisis, but are arguing about how they can use that oil to best serve select economic interests.

I learned that “Alberta’s PC government is suffering a massive revenue shortfall this year, in part because of a bottleneck of heavy oil in the U.S. Midwest” and that – most likely due to the pressure this competition inherently presents for Alberta’s oil producers – they have admitted a need to step up their “commitments around greenhouse gas targets” (thankfully something is seeping through).

Had I “liked” the article and closed the page at paragraph five, I would have walked away from the experience without having learned these things. Yes, I would have become a little more familiar with my own opinion, but is not intelligent discourse, by its very design, a tool meant to challenge, not affirm our opinions?

So, as I continue to try to keep-up within this high-paced, social media world, and spend my time ingesting other people’s hard work, I hope I can remember to periodically remind myself: “I am here to learn, not to like.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This post is Part 1 of the Canada Closed for Debate Series, a four-part exploration of argumentation in Canadian political discourse. Read the second part on villifying your opponent, the second part on reductio-ad-villainum, and the third part on carrying a concealed motive to get caught up.   

There are certain things that tolerant people should not tolerate.

There is a very peculiar kind of dishonesty in the Canadian political sphere that we see through but seem to tolerate all the same. These are bad arguments made by our public leaders. 

There is a difference between a bad argument and an invalid argument. An invalid argument is one where the speaker has made a mistake in drawing a conclusion from the premises – a sort of logical gaffe. We can argue in good faith but still get it wrong. A bad argument is one where the speaker conceals his aims, misconstrues opposing opinions, and relies on rhetoric to convince the audience. 

Bad arguments are easy to spot and I consider myself something of a zoologist of bad arguments in the ecosystem of Canadian politics. Here is a brief taxonomy I have compiled: a) topic laundering; b) reductio-ad-villainum; c) carrying a concealed motive. In this instalment we take a closer look at the topic launderer in its natural habitat.

Topic Laundering: A topic launderer changes themes and topics of discussion in a debate to hide what the argument is really about.

Consider the case of the Ethical Oil campaign. [view:in_this_series=block_1] Someone concerned with environmental ethics might ask if it is right to rapidly expand drilling operations, if it is right to permanently alter the landscape in the name of private interests, or if it is right to allow business interests in the tar sands to dictate the nation's environmental policy. In response, Ethical Oil spokespeople would launder the topic and change the theme of debate to the human rights record and environmental practices (or lack thereof) in OPEC countries.

This amounts to not taking the initial questions seriously.

If I am interested in the environmental impact of tar sands-related projects to Canadian and American wildlife, a spokesperson could not answer my questions by telling me about women’s rights in Iran.

Further, if Ethical Oil really wanted to diminish OPEC’s market share because of its lack of environmental regulation, why not do that by investing in technologies that would free us from our dependence on oil altogether, regardless of its provenance? Even dressed up as 'ethical,' oil is still oil.

In changing the theme but keeping the title of the debate (e.g., the tar sands), topic laundering not only ignores the critic’s questions and arguments, it also erodes the very condition in which a sensible political debate can take place in a democracy, i.e., that we are weighing arguments and counterarguments about the same thing.

For that reason, topic laundering is not just a form of spin, it is a form of treachery.

The topic launderer betrays Canadian democracy to which s/he belongs by gnawing away at open debate. Open debate is not just an expression of freedom. As John Stuart Mill tells us: “Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action.”

In other words, if the Ethical Oil crowd will not give us the freedom to contradict or disprove their arguments, they are not justified in maintaining them, or building public policy upon them.

To the topic launderer I pose two questions: what does ethical oil have to do with the price of eggs? And did you know that Dante placed the fraudulent and treacherous in the lowest circles of the Inferno?

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