The climate crisis is one of the most pressing challenges of the global development agenda. In recent years, young people have been publicly recognised as key stakeholders in efforts to address it. One of the platforms through which young climate activists and advocates engage in climate governance is the annual Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Typically accompanied by widespread media coverage, COPs provide opportunities for both State and Non-State Actors - including youth - for claim-making, agenda-setting, advocacy, and awareness raising.    Despite the growing attention to youth-led climate activism, research on the ways in which youth participate in the COPs, their experiences, and perceptions of their participation, has been limited and has tended to focus on youth from the Global North. To begin to address this gap, this research explores the experiences of youth climate activists and advocates from the Global South at the COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. Informed by theories and frameworks of participation, the objective is to understand how these young people participated, the factors and dynamics which affected their experience, and how they viewed their participation. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews conducted in March and April 2022 with 11 young people who were all first-time attendees of the COP.   During COP26 they were engaged in activities in both the formal spaces of COP, such as side-events and negotiations, as well as informal or civil society spaces like marches and offsite events. Perceptions of youth participation varied among the interviewees and depended on the spaces or interactions discussed. Many expressed frustrations with the narrow opportunities for young people to engage in the official decision-making processes. However, despite the challenges to their participation in the formal spaces of COP26, young people experienced strong community connections with other youth, acquired new knowledge or skills, and established links and collaborative opportunities with other organisations and youth. In spite of the limitations, many saw value in the continued participation of young people in formal spaces of the COP and shared suggestions for enhancing young people’s engagement.

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This paper uses Panofsky’s iconographic method to analyze images and texts belonging to two environmental activist organizations: Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion. The purpose of the analysis is to gain an understanding of how design is used today to engage people in environmental activism. Two theories will be used to conduct the analysis; the first one is the theory of strategic activism which involves differentiating between radical activism and conventional activism. The second theory is Hall’s theory of representation which will be used to gain knowledge of how the organizations represent people in their imagery. The analysis show that Greenpeace show signs of conventional strategy and Extinction Rebellion show signs of radical strategy in their imagery. Lastly, I will discuss if the activist strategy shown in the organizations imagery correlates with their actions.

This thesis aims to conduct a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of news articles and tweets discussing the climate protest that occurred on October 14th, 2022, where activists threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflower” at the London National Museum. The purpose is to investigate the media logic and the underlying social and cultural factors of iconoclastic actions that shaped the media discourse surrounding the event. The research questions this thesis aims to investigate are: RQ1: How are news values emphasized in media coverage of the tomato soup incident, as reflected in both news articles and Twitter posts? RQ2: Through the lens of media logic, how do media discourses shape perceptions of the climate action? RQ3: ​​How do affiliations with culturally significant artifacts and the climate shape the discursive representations of the protest in news articles and tweets? The sample consists of 34 tweets and 15 news articles. It is analyzed according to Van Dijk’s and Faircough’s CDA frameworks and the concepts of mediatization, media logic, iconoclasm, affiliation (as defined by Stoler (2022)) and news values. The results of this study suggest that the event had significant news value due to the iconoclastic tactics. Further, the media logic is seemingly involved in shaping the news into a sensationalistic story with little focus on the cause of the action. Lastly, the discourses surrounding the event on the platforms can be discussed in light of affiliation to provide an understanding of the discourse.

On the 15th of March 2019, more than 1.6 million students have protested in 125 countries against the climate change effects, as part of the Fridays for Future movement. The manifestations represented the biggest day of global climate action ever taken, according to media outlets. At the core of this movement stands Greta Thunberg, a Swedish 16-year old climate activist and a Nobel Prize nominee, whose actions and speeches serve as inspiration for both students and adults.  With a focus on environmental communication and climate activism, this research aims to find how the teenager addressed climate change topics and how she succeeded in conveying her ideas to audiences. It discusses how the rhetoric was constructed within her speeches, and which of the argumentative elements gave Greta Thunberg the ability to convince the public. The study combines frame and rhetoric analysis with a focus on the text of the speeches that Greta Thunberg delivered in three major international events. The purpose is to observe and understand the nature of Greta Thunberg’s activism by analyzing how the high school student used the linguistic tools and tactics in her public speeches, and to explore a few theories within the text: the issue framing of the climate crisis; the argumentative and discursive techniques that helped her to gain media and public attention.  The thesis concludes that the evolution of Greta Thunberg’s climate activism, from ‘no attention’ to global reputation, is based on grassroots activism, particular personality features, and efficient use of rhetoric devices combined with moral purpose argumentation. / <p><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p><p>I take the opportunity to thank my Master thesis supervisor professor Paola Sartoretto, from Stockholm University, for the valuable professional support that she offered. Additionally, I thank professor Mia Verhoeff Friman from Jönköping University, for her useful remarks and input during this 2-year Master’s Program.</p><p>Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude for all the encouragement I received in my efforts to attend this program and to address special thanks to my mother Otilia for her continuous guidance and love, for always believing in me, and for being my role model as a mother, woman, teacher, and respected professional.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to test the main principle of the Gateway Belief Model (GBM) on Twitter data, as suggested and experimentally validated by other authors. van der Linden et al. (2015 and 2019). The GBM predicts that the perception of scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change increases the probability of support for public action against or in favor of the mitigation of the climate change. In this work I analyse a random sample of 115,940,434 tweets gathered over the course of the first six months of 2020. The big data is pre-processed using unsupervised (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and supervised (Naïve Bayes Classifier) machine learning algorithms in order to generate keywords for filtering environmentally themed tweets and to classify either absence or presence of the climate activism. Within the dataset, 5,857 environmentally themed tweets were detected, finding that only 94 out of them were explicitly linked to the message of scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change. The harvested dataset proved to be unsuitable for testing the GBM, not only because of the small number of tweets which contain the message about 97 % of climatologists reaching the consensus, but also because the majority of these tweets deny the consensus and therefore, do not represent a...

This study aims at exploring a new phenomenon labelled here as green populism. Building on modern theories of populism and green ideology, this case-study is focused on finding which elements of green populism are present, if any, in Greta Thunberg’s discourse. Using a Qualitative Content Analysis methodology and what is known as a coding process, it was possible to determine that all six subcategories of green populism, defined by this study as a) ecological crisis of cosmic proportion, b) victimisation of "the people", c) blame attribution to "the elite", d) green radicalisation, e) trust in science, and finally, f) intergenerational justice, can be identified in Greta Thunberg’s speeches. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Greta Thunberg is a populist actor which combines both populism thin-centred ideology and green ideology into a new phenomenon: green populism. / <p>Contact: ac222sd@student.lnu.se</p>

This thesis explores the role of environmental perceptions and activism in migration decision-making within the context of a country highly vulnerable to climate change. It focuses on a case study of young climate activists in Bangladesh, and their aspirations for staying or moving. The qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews. For analysis of migration decisions, the study utilizes a theoretical framework of aspirations and capabilities by De Haas (2021), while incorporating concepts of Hirschman’s (1978) “voice” and Robins’(2022) “duty to loyalty”. The study reveals that climate activists are aware of and concerned about environmental changes, but do not perceive them as immediate threat to their current livelihoods. While they face daily challenges and witness the vulnerability of communities, they express hope and actively choose to stay in their country. Activism serves them to voice their concern and help their community. The constant interaction between the environmental perceptions and activism, shapes their capacity to envision a better future and enhances their aspirations for staying in their motherland

African communities are among those most profoundly impacted by the climate crisis, even though they have contributed little to climate change (CDP, 2020). This crisis is especially felt by African youth, who are already disadvantaged and marginalized by political and economic conditions. Like elsewhere around the world, the existential threat of the climate crisis has led to a surge in youth-led climate activism in Africa. Nevertheless, less attention is paid to voices originating from the Global South, especially in Africa.This dissertation explores the plight of young African environmental activists in sub-Saharan nations by considering what strategies and tactics they have used to be seen and heard. To do so, it explores the challenges of communicating climate change, by asking how these young activists are attempting to use communication, information, and media tools to confront the region’s unfolding ecological crisis, educate the public, and challenge misconceptions about climate change while elaborating a social movement network across multiple African nations. To pursue this goal, it draws from African media studies (Madrid-Morales et al., 2021; Mano & Milton, 2021; Wasserman, 2018), media activism (Lim, 2018; Rodríguez, 2011), and ecological activism (T. Bosch, 2012; Fonseca & Castro, 2022; Gonzalez et al., 2021; O’Brien et al., 2018; Wolfe, 2008), to conduct a multi-sited ethnography of activists from eight African countries. The study is organized as case studies developed through a combination of in-depth interviews with the activists, analysis of the texts they have produced through digital platforms, and their relationships with their own communities as well as, more broadly, youth-centered climate activist networks emerging in the Global South and elsewhere. The findings indicate that African climate activists evolve through stages leading to their engagement. To speak for the environment and engage their audiences, they educate themselves and learn to creatively employ traditional and new media. In the process, they must also navigate a social and cultural landscape of racism, ageism, tokenism, and political repression through networking, self-care, and ingenuity. Their stories expand current understanding of eco-activism strategies and tactics, such as boycotts, public appearances, and disruptive social media virality, underscoring their place within ecological jeremiads that offer, in turn, new insights into the growing field of African Media Studies. / Media & Communication

Unga klimataktivisters drivkrafter beskrivs ofta i negativ konnoterade termer som klimatångest eller flygskam i media och deras livsstilar sägs vara full av begränsningar. Denna studie undersöker hur klimataktivistiska studenter själva ser på sin livsstil och vilka visioner de har för en socioekologisk transformation. Med hjälp av ett teoretiskt ramverk baserat på det politikisk-ekologiska anpassningsparadigmet och fantasin framkom följande resultat.  I fem semistrukturerade intervjuer under en kvalitativ studie hittades sex huvudteman. I (1) att leva som jag lär betonar deltagarna att de har anpassat sig till hållbara livsstilar med hjälp av tillräcklighetsstrategier bland annat. Det finns skillnader i (2) mitt aktivistiska engagemang men samtliga anser sina studier vara en form av aktivism. De känner inte brist på (3) frihet, men känner sig privilegierade, eftersom de medvetet valde dessa livsstilar som ålägger dem vissa begränsningar. Mer brist på frihet orsakas av de många beslut som måste fattas och deras miljösamveten, som de ständigt ifrågasätter. På detta sätt tjänar deras (4) bubblan till att fatta beslut, lära sig tillsammans, engagera sig och skapa en gemensam vilja. Deras transformativa (5) visioner kretsar kring ett inkluderande förhållande mellan människa och natur och bättre interpersonella relationer med öppen och ärlig kommunikation. Framför allt är det strukturella förändringar som de understryker. Trots all realism och skepsis uttrycker deltagarna i studien (6) aktivt hopp. / Young climate activists' motivations are frequently described in negative connotations such as climate anxiety or flight shame in the media. Their lifestyles are said to be full of constraints. This study examines how climate activistic students themselves view their lifestyle and analyses their visions for the socioecological transformation. Based on a theoretical framework of the political-ecological adaptation paradigm and an imagination framework, the following results emerged.  In five semi-structured interviews during a qualitative study, six main themes were found. In (1) “to practice what I preach” students highlight that they have adapted to sustainable lifestyles using sufficiency strategies inter alia. There is variation in their (2) “activist engagement” but they all envision their studies as being one form of activism. They do not feel a lack of (3) “freedom of choice”, but feel privileged anyhow, as they consciously choose these lifestyles imposing some constraints for themselves. More stressful are the many decisions that must be made and their environmental awareness, which they constantly question even with the best of intentions. In doing so, their (4) “climate activist community” serves to make decisions, learn together, get involved and create a common will. Their transformative (5) “visions” play around an integrative human-nature relationship and better interpersonal relationships with open and honest communication. Structural changes are most necessary to them. Despite all realism and skepticism, the participants in the study express (6) “active, grounded hope”.