Gasland: The Rhetoric of Images in the New Media Landscape

Abstract Josh Fox\u27s film Gasland, released in 2010, started the national debate concerning the process of hydraulic fracturing and launched the term fracking into the public consciousness. Gasland, nominated for four Emmy Awards, was the winner of the 2010 Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary, the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, and the Yale Environmental Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Using the momentum from the film\u27s popular reception, Fox and the Gasland team successfully established a grassroots movement that was responsible for helping create the Frack Act and a moratorium of fracking in the Delaware River Shed. This thesis intends to determine what made Gasland so influential. Through a rhetorical criticism and media analysis, I will show how Fox\u27s film ignited the debate on domestic natural gas production and has created a multi-public literacy that enables social change