Abstract
Drawing from interviews with 31 young leading climate activists from 23 countries across the world this article aims to capture the contribution of the recent youth climate movement to communicating climate science and politics. We show that from the point of view of the youth activists, the movement powerfully connects personal and local experiences and emotions with climate science. This has enabled the activists to construct an authentic, generational and temporal identity that has helped them to carve out an autonomous position and voice with considerable moral authority among existing climate policy actors. Claiming to represent the future generation, we conclude that activists have offered an important added value to climate science as new ambassadors for scientific consensus and climate mitigation. The youth movement and the added value it brings communicating climate science is an example of the dynamics of the formation of “relational publics” and emphasizes the need to understand better the networked communication landscape where climate politics is debated.
Highlights
Born in 2003, or “at 375 ppm” as her Twitter handles declares, Greta Thunberg was first observed publicly as a lone 15-year-old demonstrator in front the Swedish parliament in the fall of 2018
Climate science has played a central part in the rhetoric of the youth movement throughout its existence
Enabled by the current global, networked communication infrastructure the movement has crafted a relatively autonomous identity in the global debate and has re-energized the message of climate science and expertise with a new distinct voice as well as a kind of moral authority and resonance. Understanding how this space in the contested field of climate politics was carved demands that we explore the youth movement leaders as emerging actors in specific network of other actors in the global climate politics
Summary
Born in 2003, or “at 375 ppm” as her Twitter handles declares, Greta Thunberg was first observed publicly as a lone 15-year-old demonstrator in front the Swedish parliament in the fall of 2018. Enabled by the current global, networked communication infrastructure the movement has crafted a relatively autonomous identity in the global debate and has re-energized the message of climate science and expertise with a new distinct voice as well as a kind of moral authority and resonance. Understanding how this space in the contested field of climate politics was carved demands that we explore the youth movement leaders as emerging actors in specific network of other actors in the global climate politics. Understanding the network and interplay of the youth movement, climate science, and other actors of climate politics may highlight parts of the dynamic of the current communication environment in which scientific expertise about the global climate crisis plays out
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