Andrea C. Lloyd
SciComm Andrea
Strategic Science Communication
Academic Projects
Written Assignments and Projects
Majoring in Communication and minoring in English guarantees you a college-lifetime of writing. Some of my favorite and most interesting pieces are linked below. What I find interesting is as a freshman taking a "Climate Change" environmental, I focused on a topic in educating the public about lionfish, long before I honed in on public relations or science communication.
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Documenting a December Day in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (Fall 2018, Senior):
The Wright brothers changed human history with a matter of twelve seconds in 1903. That first flight was captured by John T Daniels, who had never before seen let alone operated a camera. This helped established a precedent for aeronautic and aviation photography as a means of documenting and communicating science, a tradition that has expanded to other disciplines and is still upheld by NASA, a product of the Wright Flyer's successful flight. In this essay I contextualize the famous flight photograph with relation to the past (Daedalus and Lilienthal) and the future (NACA and NASA) as a means of marking the importance of the Wrights' initial flight.
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The Reef and The Public: An Analysis of Past and Current Great Barrier Reef Media Campaigns (Spring 2018, Junior; ECA, Apr 2019):
Over the course of 50 years, the problems the GBR faces are the same at heart: protecting the corals. How the people who formed these campaigns mediated their message was different, however. With “Save the Reef,” campaigners were at the knees of the media when it came to sharing their message—a sort of passive representation. Some changes from the previous campaign include the communication speed and scale has drastically changed. As a result, action can seem instantaneous. With “Fight for Our Reef,” the campaigners represent themselves by forcing power structures to engage with them. It balances a mixture of media, industry, and government by engaging citizens with participatory culture and politics to capture public debate.
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Finding Cuban Identity through Raperos (Fall 2016, Sophomore): In the 1980s, Florida radio and television waves reach the shores of Cuba, bringing the sound of rap. Local Afrocubanos resonated with the genre, and began to create their own underground music scene. The 1990s begin and Alamar, a barrio of Havana, has become the birthplace of rap de Cubano. By 1999, the Cuban government declares Cuban Hip-Hop as an “authentic expression of Cuban Culture”. The government promotes creating a Cuban identity with rap, but the Afrocubanos sought to create a self-identity separate from the governmental intentions. Ultimately this complex relationship between the cubano raperos’ and the Cuban government’s differing goals leads to the question of how the Cuban hip-hop revolution creates identity for the raperos and the cubanos.
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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean (Spring 2016, Freshman):
Around thirty years ago, Indo-Pacific Lionfish, entered the US marine environment along the East coast of Florida. These venomous fish currently wreak havoc across the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and West Atlantic Ocean; scientists estimate lionfish could drive 80% of the biodiversity of these three marine environments to extinction. Unless significant efforts are made towards a decrease of population, it will continue to increase across these bodies of water. The purpose of this essay is to inform the public of what is known about the introduction of the lionfish in the Florida’s marine environment, the distribution of the lionfish as it changes over time, and the approaches that can be used to help manage the population of the invasion of lionfish in Florida.