Poverty & Hunger PSA (Blog Post #7)

Heyyy everyone!! It feels like it's only been a minute since I last posted on this blog (yeah, it was literally just last week), but I'm here to talk about my civic engagement topic of poverty and hunger again, but this time with a public service announcement! ❗❗❗

For my little public service announcement, I used two books that I focused on a lot last week! These books are Smoove City by Kenny Keil and Maddi's Fridge by Lois Brandt.

And here is the PSA I created!

Poverty and Hunger Public Service Announcement

Creating this PSA as a breaking news type style pushed me to think differently about how messaes about poverty and hunger can be communicated. Instead of just explaining ideas in writing, I had to combine text, visuals, audio, and tone to create urgency and emotional impact. Using short, headline style phrases alongside different background videos like empty spaces or everyday city life scenes helped highlight how hunger is often hidden in plain sight, which connects to key ideas in Maddi's Fridge and Smoove City. This multimodal format mde me focus less on summarizing and more on how to make an audience feel and recognize the issue. 

This process also made me more aware of audience and perspective. By framing this announcement as a "breaking news" video, this made hunger feel immediate and local, rather than distant. It showed me how the way information is presented can shape what people notice and how seriously they take an issue. Multimodal work like this can amplify learning by engaging different ways of thinking, not just reading and writing, but also designing and interpreting meaning. It also promotes civic engagement by encouraging people to connect what they learn to real-world issues and consider how they might respond or help. 

At the same time, creating this public service announcement required me to think about the ethical use of media. I had to consider where images and ideas came from, how to represent people respectfully, and the importance of giving credit. This just highlights how multimodal projects can help teach critical and ethical use of resources, including fair use and avoiding harmful stereotypes. This experience showed me that multimodal composition isn't just creative. It's also thoughtful and responsible, and it can deepen understanding of important social issues.

Well, thanks for watching my PSA and possibly reading my ramble of thoughts related to combining multiple modalities! 📹




Comments

  1. JimmaurieApril 16, 2026 at 11:47 PM

    Hi Emily, I really enjoyed your PSA. From the visuals, to the music, to the captioning, it felt very official and fitting. You bring up a great point in how to ethically depict people in these types of videos is something that we have to be very careful and conscious about. It's very easy to misrepresent people or inadvertently reinforce negative messaging if we aren't careful.

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  2. OliveApril 27, 2026 at 10:18 PM

    Hi Emily! This PSA really captured the issue really well! Like you said this PSA definitely made the issue more "immediate and local." This made the issue seem urgent for sure, like this should be on the news and something that everyone is seeing and hearing. Also these pictures and words you used spoke to me so much and were very effective together! The line, "would you notice?" with the close up of the mans eyes really made me think about how I approach this issue!

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