Social movements focusing on environmental issues experienced a renaissance in September 2018, and concurrently the environmentally focused social movement Extinction Rebellion was founded. Previous research reveals that social media has become an important tool for social movements for both mobilising and spreading knowledge and information. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine Extinction Rebellion Sweden's strategic communication and work processes during the campaign Novemberupproret (The November revolt), and to identify what characterized the posts on Extinction Rebellion Sweden's Facebook during the campaign. The theoretical frameworks used in this study was Grunig's two-way symmetrical and asymmetrical communication (Falkheimer & Heide 2014), Habermas theory regarding social actions (Falkheimer & Heide 2018) and ultimately semiotics by Barthes (1977). The findings are based on interviews with two members of Extinction Rebellion Sweden, along with a qualitative content analysis and a semiotic analysis. The findings of this study reveal that Extinction Rebellion Sweden mainly focuses, both in terms of strategies and work processes, on content regarding information and knowledge sharing, rather than mobilising content. The empirical material shows that the posts with two-way asymmetrical communication have generated more interaction in terms of likes, comments and sharing on Facebook, which opposes Grunig's theory regarding two-way communication. Further, it is revealed that Extinction Rebellions Sweden's most frequently used communication strategy during Novemberupproret were consciously hidden strategic actions. Lastly the findings show that the movement´s work process during Novemberupproret was built on democratic and collective principles both between Extinction Rebellion Sweden's internal project groups and within the national media group.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur den klimataktivistiska organisationen Extinction Rebellion Sverige gestaltar klimatfrågan och på vilka sätt denna gestaltning ligger till grund för skapandet av en kollektiv identitet. Det har jag gjort genom att fokusera på organisationens pressmeddelanden som de publicerat på sin hemsida. Det blir relevant att studera pressmeddelanden då dessa kan ses som en slags intern och extern kommunikationskanal där Extinction Rebellion Sverige kan förmedla sina värderingar och åsikter. Jag analyserar mitt material utifrån gestaltningsteorin och teorier om nya sociala rörelser och kollektiv identitet. De huvudsakliga resultaten visar på en väldigt alarmistisk syn på klimatfrågan där stort ansvar läggs på svenska politiker. Samtidigt finner de stor tilltro till deras aktioner av civil olydnad. Den kollektiva identitet som ges uttryck för i pressmeddelandena grundar sig mycket i att ifrågasätta systemet och att medlemmar skriver under på den verklighetsbild som presenteras. / The study aims to examine how the climate activism-organization Extinction Rebellion Sweden frames climate change and how the framing plays a part of their collective identity. This is done by studying press releases published on their website. I find press releases relevant for this study since it is a way of both internal and external communication where Extinction Rebellion Sweden can mediate their values and opinions. The theory being used is framing theory as well and theories of new social movements and collective identity. The results show that they tend to frame climate change in an alarmistic way where a lot of the responsibility is put on Swedish politicians. At the same time, they express great faith in civil disobedience as action. The collective identity being expressed in the press releases is based in questioning the system and the fact that their members agrees on the reality being presented.

Previous research on social movements shows that as a consequence of social stratification, structurally privileged groups in society are more prone to engage in and take on leading positions in collective action than those who are structurally marginalised. This essay takes off in the puzzle of deficient inclusion in social movements that identify as inclusive, and looks at how that problem also appear empirically in the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion (XR). As attention to environmental issues and climate activism has increased significantly over the last years, many activists and scholars have pointed out the importance of tackling the problem with an intersectional feminist approach. Therefore, an interpretive discourse analysis with a “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach is applied to the strategically chosen case of XR, and the results are interpreted through an intersectional feminist lens as conceptualised by Angela Davis (1981, 2016). The analysis contributes to the research problem through identifying two parallel problem representations, one representing the problem as proximate, local and technical-environmental and one representing it as current, global and societal-environmental. It is concluded that part of XR’s discourse rests on a problem representation that risks reproducing structural power relations. According to Davis’s conceptualisation of intersectional feminism this could have dire consequences for a movement which has shown to have potential to influence politics.

This thesis aims to explore the new concept of green populism and to explore if Extinction Rebellion can be seen as a new social movement. The concept of green populism is based on Cas Mudde’s ideational approach to populism and Dobson’s approach to green ideology. The theories will form a categorization of green populism to see if any of these elements are visible in Extinction Rebellion’s discourse. The combination of the two theories helps to define the elements or categories of green populism: Ecological Crisis of Cosmic Proportion, Victimizing “the People”, Identifying and/or blame the antagonist, Green Action, Scientific Evidencing, and Intergenerational Justice. The theories on new social movements is based on theories from scholars such as Alberto Melucci, Alain Touraine and Manuel Castells to help us understand what characterizes a new social movement. The four following characteristics of new social movements was highlighted: They focus on non-material issues, they tend to emphasize different protest tactics, they often have a horizontal organization, and they often use symbolic action. To answer the research questions in this thesis, a qualitative text analysis will be conducted. A qualitative text analysis focuses on certain selected aspects of the material which are determined by the aim and research questions. The qualitative text analysis is applied to the captions of eight selected Instagram-posts from Extinction Rebellion’s official account. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Extinction Rebellion can be seen as a new social movement, with a few exceptions regarding their focus on non-material issues. Another conclusion is that we were able to find elements of green populism in Extinction Rebellion’s discourse. The final conclusion is that green populism should be seen as a theoretical and analytical tool for analyzing communication rather than a label of environmental actors.

Research on transformations has recognized that trajectories towards sustainability are negotiated and contested through framings and narratives. There is, however, still a greater need to explore the role of social movements and their ability to characterize a problem, propose solutions and motivate the public to become engaged. This holds particularly true for the extensive field of climate politics in which different climate change framings compete. In recent years, a new wave of climate activism has emerged amidst an increased sense of urgency and severity of the climate crisis. One of the driving forces, Extinction Rebellion (XR), has managed to engage large numbers of people while making radical demands to the government. However, critical voices have challenged XR’s use of politically “neutral” language which communicates climate change in moral rather than political terms for displacing power and conflict. Drawing on framing theory and post-foundational political theory, I examine how XR UK frames the climate crisis in relation to political change, to better understand how the movement navigates between consensus and antagonism in the context of a depoliticization of climate change discourses. The analysis is based on a collection of semi-structured interviews with XR UK activists as well as key movement documents.  The analysis and subsequent discussion reveal a dynamic and contentious discursive field, with key findings including the identification of three collective action frames: (1) Climate Breakdown, (2) Web of Life and (3) Global Justice. These are linked together by the Global Climate Emergency master frame. The degree to which the frames are (de-)politicized varies and reflects different interpretations of transformation towards sustainability.

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“There is an overconsumption in the Swedish society that affects all living and contributes with consequences for all. How does this affect us humans? How does it affect society and what consequences become visible? Today the main focus is on the environment and climate changes where the government and the media are responsible for what is being published. The focus is the entire population but is the government and the media doing a good job to reach out to everyone of its inhabitants? To get a first point of view of the situation we have chosen a subculture to investigate - a social movement, Extinction Rebellion. They are making headlines all over the world with their radical actions which both informs and scares the population. Our study will have its starting point in the theories of Zygmunt Bauman - The consumer society, Bert Klandermans & Jacqueline van Stekelenburg - Social movements and Richard Jenkins - Social identity. By collecting empirical research by qualitative interviews, we would like to find an understanding that can explain why some people choose to deviate from the norm to act against society for the environment. The result indicate that people would like to change the society and that there is a genuine fear that is connected to the consumer society and its consequences. These consequences are the motivation for people to join a social movement, such as Extinction Rebellion.” / Det finns en överkonsumtion inom det svenska samhället som påverkar allt levande och bidrar med konsekvenser för alla. Hur påverkas människan? Hur påverkas samhället och vilka konsekvenser blir synliga? Det är idag stort fokus på miljön och klimatförändringar där staten och media väljer vad som publiceras. Deras inriktning blir mot hela befolkningen, men lyckas staten och media nå ut till alla invånare? För att få en inblick i hur situationen ser ut har vi valt att granska en subkultur - en social rörelse, Extinction Rebellion, som försöker skapa rubriker runt om i världen genom radikala aktioner som både informerar och skrämmer upp befolkningen. Studien har sin utgångspunkt i Zygmunt Baumans - konsumtionssamhället, Bert Klandermans & Jacqueline van Stekelenburg - sociala rörelser samt Richard Jenkins - social identitet. Metoden som används är kvalitativa intervjuer som söker en förståelse för att förklarar varför vissa människor aktivt väljer att avvika från normer för att ta ställning mot samhället för miljöns skull. Resultatet pekar på att individer har en vilja att förändra samhället samt en genuin rädsla för det senmoderna konsumtionssamhällets konsekvenser. Dessa konsekvenser blir en faktor som motiverar människor till att gå med i en social rörelse som Extinction Rebellion.

This thesis investigates the portrayal of non-violent direct action (NVDA) in This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook by considering the two chapters “Courting Arrest” by Jay Griffiths, and “The Civil Resistance Model” by Roger Hallam. Using critical discourse analysis in the style of Norman Fairclough, I examine the textual features, discourse practices, and social practices of the chapters by applying theories of environmental justice, intersectionality, and embodiment. I argue that Griffiths and Hallam reproduce oppressive power structures by excluding certain identities and experiences from their discourse. First, the lack of a discussion of the situatedness of violence within the NVDA strategy employed by Extinction Rebellion – focusing on having as many protestors arrested as possible – represents the acts of arrest as inherently non-violent. This representation erases other possible experiences of arrest from the discourse. Second, the authors portray their own experiences as universal, and thereby create a universal subject that is white, middle-class, able-bodied, and a legal resident of the UK. Discourse is seen as both constitutive of, and constituted by, the social world; this portrayal of subjectivities is shown to have very real effects on to what degree certain identities feel at home within the Extinction Rebellion movement. I conclude the study with a discussion of possible paths for Extinction Rebellion and other similar movements to become more inclusive by adopting a more intersectional perspective that acknowledges the embodied realities of different identities. By applying this perspective, these movements can start working against hegemonic structures of oppression that exclude certain (non-white) identities from decision-making processes.

This study investigated how the age of an environmental movement organisation and its degree of institutionalisation impacted the usage of threat-related framing and blame attribution in regards to environmental issues. Environmental discourse has lately developed a rhetoric that embraces urgency and severity, but how different types of environmental movement organisations have approached this, historically and today, has not been widely studied. A mixed-methods approach was therefore employed that thematically examined texts from the Swedish branch of Extinction Rebellion and The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation at several points in time. The analysis indicated that the degree of institutionalisation had an influence on the organisation’s blame attribution, whilst age did not. Furthermore, no conclusive implications followed the analysis of the organisation’s framings. The study concluded that the degree of institutionalisation is an important factor behind how environmental movement organisations choose their blame attribution. The study provided insights into how institutionalisation affects strategic choices of movement organisations, possibly providing a foundation for future research in the field.

Denna kvalitativa studie ämnar undersöka vilka diskurser, perspektiv och aktörer som speglas i media kring ämnet klimataktivism. Detta har undersökts genom en kritisk diskursanalys i vilken tematisk analys har använts för att analysera 193 stycken medieartiklar från de fyra mest lästa svenska tidningarna. Studien har utförts i en svensk kontext och begränsats till ett tidsspann mellan 2018-2023. Ytterligare presenteras tidigare forskning inom ämnet för ny klimataktivism samt klimataktivism och media. För analysen av resultatet har Foucaults (2003, 2009) teorier kring disciplin, makt och kunskap, ideologi, diskurser, den reglerande apparaten samt olydnad använts som ett övergripande ramverk, vilka kompletteras med begrepp från Mathiesen (1982). Utöver detta har Becks (2009, 2012) teorier om risksamhälle och hot använts, vilka kompletteras med begrepp från Altheide (2013), för att kunna analysera resultatet på omfattande och djupgående sätt, anpassat till det moderna samhället. Medelst detta visar undersökningen en djupgående och omfattande bild genom att rama in mediers speglande av ämnet klimataktivismen i samtiden. Det visades olika, delvis motstridiga, diskurser: ”kampen för klimatet”, ”klimataktivismen som hot” samt ”politiken som hot”, vilka också innefattar olika mindre diskurser om exempelvis ”domedagen” och ”civil olydnad”. Vidare framkom att alla diskurser innefattar positiva och negativa diskursiva aspekter, där dock alla diskurser och aspekter ramas in av en allomfattande ”riskdiskurs” som uttrycks genom de olika perspektiven inom ämnet klimataktivism. Sist förs en avslutande diskussion om konsekvenserna och utkomsterna av denna diskursiva framställning av klimataktivism; en reflektion kring vad som sker och kan ske genom mediers porträttering och vilken vikt media har för produktionen av upplevelser i samhället. / This qualitative study aims to analyse discourses, perspectives and actors which are represented in media within the topic: climate activism. The study was implemented through critical discourse analysis (CDA) in which thematic analysis was used to analyse the material of 193 news articles from the four most read Swedish newspapers. Furthermore, the study was delimited to Sweden and in a timeframe from 2018-2023. Also, previous research about today’s climate activism and climate activism and media is represented. For the analysis of the results, Foucault’s (2009, 2003) theories about discipline, power and knowledge, ideology, discourse, the ruling apparatus, and disobedience have been used. These theories have been completed by concepts from Mathiesen (1982). Moreover Beck’s (2009, 2012) theories of risk society and threat have been used and completed by concepts from Altheide (2013), to be able to analyse the results in an extensive and profound way which fits today’s modern society. Through that, the study shows a deep and including picture that frames how media portraits the topic: climate activism. The study has shown discourses, that in some ways are contradictory: “fight for the climate”, “climate activists as threat” and “politics as threat”. These discourses include several smaller discourses, for instance “doomsday” and “civil disobedience”. Also, it has been shown that all discourses include positive and negative aspects, yet all discourses and aspects of them set in an all-encompassing “risk-discourse”, which takes form through the different perspectives that are included in the subject of climate activism. Lastly, a final discussion is held about the consequences and outcomes of the discursive representation of climate activism; a reflection about what is and what can be happening because of the representation through media and what significance media has in the production of experience in society. / <p>2024-05-30</p>