Climate activism in a time of crisis: Lessons from Fridays for Future’s environmental framing during the COVID-19 pandemic
By Giuliana Sorce and Delia Dumitrica in collaboration with Hong Nguyen
The abrupt prioritization of health in our daily lives brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic has left other societal issues struggling for attention. Virus containment measures stopped or curtailed mass gatherings. Climate activism had to quickly adapt to digital actions while losing the visibility of street protests. As social media feeds filled up with posts about the pandemic, overflowing hospitals, and vaccine developments, activists talking about climate and urging for of political action have to compete for our attention.
How can climate activism remain relevant when everyone’s attention is drawn to infection rates and lockdowns?
Our research on the youth environmental movement Fridays for Future (FFF) sheds some light on how climate activists frame the relevance of their cause when global publics are occupied with a competing crisis.
Framing climate change in a pandemic
The way movements communicate their causes and goals matters greatly, as the ways in which these are depicted and explained for larger audiences can help movements build their collective identity and enable supporters to recognize themselves in it. This process, known as framing, entails word choices (such as “suffering”, “dying”, “collapsing”), topic choices, and even slogans that become associated with a particular movement (“there’s no planet B”).
Our study focused on FFF’s digital communication during the early stages of the pandemic. To understand how the movement framed its message in order to remain relevant in the context of disruptive global health and economic anxieties, we analyzed 457 posts from the Facebook pages of 29 FFF groups across the European Union, including the official account of Greta Thunberg and the FFF International.
The ability to respond to and adapt to current events and their consequences is crucial to keeping the movement relevant in the public’s mind. Our research suggests this adaptation entails three overlapping framing processes:
Adaptation: Compliance and solidarity
FFF responded to the pandemic and its global management by picking up on its existing demand to listen to scientists. During the pandemic, the movement has expanded this demand to include not only climate change but also global health.
Thus, the day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Greta Thunberg reminded her followers:
In a crisis, we change our behaviour and adapt to the new circumstances for the greater good of society.
Asking movement members to stay at home, comply with government rules, and trust virologists, she also announced the #DigitalStrike campaign as an alternative for FFF’s iconic school strikes. Immediately, FFF collectives echoed the message across their posts — “we’re staying at home but we keep fighting the climate crisis” (FFF International) and “we just have to adapt” (FFF Austria).
In staying true to its intersectional justice ethos, FFF immediately recognized and amplified the necessity of social solidarity. In the early stages of the pandemic, posts called out the integral role of (health) care workers in societies and asked to recognize those most vulnerable in this pandemic — indigenous populations, the homeless, the elderly, and those with underlying health conditions. This not only provided an important discursive opportunity for the movement to insert itself in the public discourse, but also enabled FFF to solidify its commitment to social solidarity.
Reframing: Connecting climate and health
Where adaptation entailed transforming protest communication to a new set of circumstances, reframing refers to incorporating key terms and issues at the center of public debate in the movement’s communication.
FFF did that by hijacking the words and phrases of the pandemic. Take well-known “flatten the curve” infographic, propelled to fame by scientists and popular science communicators to visualize the danger of exponential contagion for healthcare systems. By re-appropriating this infographic to climate change, FFF made a novel and catchy connection between the pandemic and its own cause.
Linking the urgency of tackling the pandemic to the that of addressing climate change was another reframing strategy. This pandemic has produced new terms and catch-phrases, connecting publics to the issue by sharing a common vocabulary. Re-associating the crisis narrative with its own narrative, FFF collectives across Europe reminded followers that “climate change is also a crisis” or that we are “living in times of a climate pandemic.” Greta Thunberg announced that “the ecological crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced,” while other collectives began identifying environmental factors connected to pandemics: air pollution (Italy), overpopulation (Hungary), capitalism (Portugal), factory farming (Bulgaria), animal habitat loss (Spain), or the destruction of biodiversity (Austria). This is best illustrated by a quick look at the overall hashtags used during the early stages of the pandemic across the collectives we have investigated:
Mobilization: Digital protest alternatives
One important goal of movement communication is to mobilize supporters. In the case of the FFF, this entailed offering digital avenues for protest.
Several collectives in our study framed continued participation in FFF by linking COVID-19 to climate change activism:
“Because of Corona, other problems got forgotten, but that does not mean that they are gone” (Czechia)
“climate crisis is still there and we’re still fighting” (Slovenia)
“the climate crisis does not go on vacation and does not quarantine” (Italy)
“even though we’re in quarantine, we must fight! The fight for climate justice goes on” (Portugal)
Organizers followed a simple recipe: Protesters were asked to make a sign, take a picture of themselves with the sign, and post it to Facebook on Fridays alongside hashtags such as #climatestrikeonline.
Lessons for climate activists and environmental communicators
Through adaptive, transformative, and mobilizing framing processes, FFF collectives in Europe have tried to stay relevant in a time when the public’s attention was inevitably drawn towards a new common enemy: the Coronavirus.
Our research sheds light on specific ways in which FFF molded their environmental justice master frame to make room for new topics and vocabularies. The framing processes we chart yield specific communication strategies to keep audiences invested when the public’s interest has been diverted by an external and unpredictable crisis.
If you are a climate activists or environmental communicator, here are four things we advise when dealing with crisis situations:
· Hijack the crisis vocabulary: try to incorporate words and phrases that have become associated with the crisis to keep capturing the public’s eye
· Stretch your existing slogans: instead of coming up with new slogans or catch phrases, re-use existing ones by expanding them to speak to current contexts.
· Link the crisis to your own cause: showcase the relevance to your issues and make connections to the crisis
· Enable participation: let followers speak to the crisis and create opportunities for them to share their own experiences
