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A Modern Solution for a Modern Climate Crisis

The two essential aspects of this project were the topic of study and the genre of

translation. Respectively, I chose to review an academic article investigating the validity of

ethanol as a partial solution to the ongoing climate crisis and chose to translate the article into a

Twitter thread. The topic of renewable energy and the state of the current climate crisis is a very

modern and contemporary issue, growing in awareness with increasingly younger generations.

Additionally, it must be acknowledged that social media is the most prominent medium of

communication among these same younger generations. Given these facts, it was an easy

decision for me to combine this article with this genre. However, there are many contemporary

issues that I could have discussed, and many social media platforms which I could have

emulated. So why ethanol, and why Twitter?

I chose ethanol as my article topic largely because of my interest in cars and engines, as

well as my interest in environmentalism. These two interests have always seemed to conflict

with one another inside me. Ever since I can remember, I have loved cars. Specifically, I love

cars with combustion engines. This includes basically all of them up until the EV revolution of

the past decade. I don’t dislike electric cars, but any car enthusiast will tell you that they lack any

soul, any flair, or any thrill. On top of that, the introduction of the EV as an environmental savior

has been a harbinger of doom to the combustion engine, despite EVs coming with their own slew

of ecological issues. This makes EVs particularly unappealing to most car enthusiasts such as

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myself, however, the environmental issue of combustion engines polluting the air with copious

amounts of carbon dioxide still cannot be ignored. Here is where ethanol steps in. Not only does

ethanol work in combustion engines as gasoline does, it actually works better. Ethanol produces

significantly more power (more power equals more smiles from enthusiasts) and significantly

fewer air pollutants. All of this means that ethanol becomes a pretty attractive solution for an

environmentally conscious car enthusiast, and an interesting topic to research.

I chose Twitter as my genre of translation because it embodies the spirit of youthful

conversation and activism, among other things. The nature of Twitter as a communicative

platform that prioritizes the sharing of ideas makes it ideal for threads such as this one that seek

to educate or spread information. All social media is based on interaction with others, however,

when compared with others such as TikTok or Instagram, Twitter’s emphasis on text rather than

videos or images makes it more conducive to conversation and therefore the best choice for a

translation of an academic article. Twitter’s reply function allows for the easy creation of threads

that surpass the app’s 280-character limit per Tweet, as well as seamless interaction between the

original poster and other users.

Originally, I struggled somewhat to come up with a specific audience, since social media

in general is so vast and encompasses almost everyone in the world from all different lifestyles

and belief systems. I found it hard to articulate who the audience was, but in my mind, I knew

how to write my genre translation. Once I started writing, it became more clear to me who would

hypothetically read these Tweets. The audience of the original article would have been people

who were relatively educated in ecology and looking to understand the effects of large-scale use

of ethanol on the environment. The audience of my genre translation to a Twitter thread would

essentially be a watered-down version of this audience. It would consist of casual

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environmentalists who may or may not have prior knowledge of ethanol as a green energy

alternative to gasoline, but are interested in solutions to the carbon dioxide problem in the

environment. The audience of the translation would be much more diverse than that of the

academic article. To compensate for this, I had to lower the level of the vocabulary used in my

Twitter thread and explain more broadly the meaning of the charts used. Conveying this

audience in my project was another challenge. In order to boost the clarity of the rhetorical

situation, I created a fake Twitter account under the alias “ES University” (ES standing for

“environmental science”) which would serve as an educational account with the goal of

spreading awareness about environmental issues. This additional context helps to establish the

purpose and audience of the Twitter thread.

One of the largest challenges that I faced in this project was understanding the

conventions of the genre that I was translating into. The reason why this was such a challenge

was because I absolutely did not expect it to be. I use Twitter regularly and am very familiar with

the conventions of Twitter, but this gave me a false sense of confidence. My understanding of the

conventions of Twitter was that you basically just say what you want, but that understanding

doesn’t really work for something like this. It is too broad and too general. I realized that

translating an academic article into a Twitter thread takes more of an understanding of the genre

than I had anticipated. I needed to ask myself a new set of questions that could help me hone in

on my translation to my new genre. The article “Navigating Genres” by Kerry Dirk offered me

some guidance here. When dealing with a new genre Dirk asked, “What features … should go

into this essay? How personal could I get? What rhetorical moves might I use, effectively or

ineffectively?” (Dirk 250). I took a step back and asked myself what features should be included

in my translation. What language should I use? How many speakers should be included? Should

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I use images? How should I incorporate my source? It wasn’t until I started asking these

questions that my translation really came alive, and went from a re-wording to a translation.

Another one of the primary struggles I faced was with the length of the translation.

Academic articles tend to be very long and very wordy. Twitter threads, on the other hand, are

not. I found it difficult to drive home my main point as well as include the proper amount of

background context for my audience with so few words. The point that I wanted to emphasize

was that ethanol is good for carbon emissions, but unfortunately is an unrealistic solution to the

problem because of its other ecological constraints. But how did I write that in the span of a few

Tweets without it getting ignored? Thanks to E. Shelley Reid’s “Ten Ways To Think About

Writing” article, I had my answer: Repetition. She writes, “So as you’re revising, add your

chorus back into some key middle parts of your essay … until you start to really feel

uncomfortable about your repetition” (Reid 12). So that’s what I did. At first, I wasn’t quite sure

how to do this in a way that made sense in my genre, until a peer review session gave me an

idea. I decided to have a number of accounts reply to my Tweets to poke a little bit of skepticism

into my argument. This afforded me an opportunity to restate my main point to this conjured

skeptic until they understood exactly what I was saying. This strategy also allowed me to

increase the realism of the translation, incorporate a source citation, and add a touch of Twitter

humor through the creation of more faux accounts.

This project was inspired by the increase that I have seen recently in young people

making use of the connective resources that they have, such as social media, to foster

conversation and spread knowledge of important issues in our world. I hope that my emulation of

an informational Twitter thread felt familiar because it is based on the real work done by my

peers to spread awareness in a way that is easily accessible to large audiences. Additionally, I

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hope that it felt familiar to active Twitter users because of my use of specific genre conventions

to add the personal touch that this particular form of social media possesses. This work done to

educate the youth on the current state of environmental affairs is crucial if our generation has any

hopes of repairing our broken earth. I believe we should look at these posts as inspiration for

how we can all work to foster change in our world.

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 Bibliography

Dias De Oliveira, Marcelo E, Burton E Vaughan, and Edward J Rykiel. “Ethanol as Fuel:

Energy, Carbon Dioxide Balances, and Ecological Footprint.” Bioscience 55.7. 2005.

593–602.

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol 1, Parlor Press.

2010. 249-262.

Reid, E. Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing

Student” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol 2, Parlor Press. 2011. 3-23.

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