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Climate Activism

Reuters: How Greta Thunberg’s climate strikes became a global movement in a year

20 August 2019

From August 20th 2018 when Greta Thunberg first skipped school to protest for more action on climate change, to one of the largest movements of climate change activism across the world, the Fridays For Future movement resulted in 2019 being termed the “year of the climate strike“. Reuters present a timeline of the growth of Greta’s individual protest to global movement of activism.

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Media Insight 23rd October 2024

New study addresses impact of climate protest images on audiences

What impact do visual representations of climate protesters in the media have on audiences? A new study has addressed this in light of the recent media trend towards depicting more young and female protesters in news stories.

By comparing audience responses to 10 different images (photo-edited to make comparisons in the study), the researchers found that images showing climate protestors and the police together, as well as images of younger protestors, tended to lead to more negative emotional responses amongst audiences. This included feelings of guilt and shame about climate impacts affecting future generations.

The content of the protest images did not deeply influence audiences’ broader climate attitudes and behaviours after viewing them. But the researchers did find that feelings towards protest images were influenced by a range of factors, such as the audiences’ gender, and suggest that the viewers’ worldview may play a role too.

  • Authors: Yu Shuang Gan, Sylvia Hayes, Lorraine Whitmarsh
  • Date: 9th October 2024
Opinion Insight 19th August 2024

Is ‘climate crisis’ a more effective term than ‘climate change’?

What’s in a name? The question of what the best – most persuasive, or least polarising – term for climate change is, has a long history.

On the one hand, small tweaks to individual words or short phrases are unlikely to be driving big differences in perceptions one way or another. People’s values, worldviews, political ideology and increasingly the perceived fairness of different climate policies, are what drives public engagement.

But whether its the editorial choices made by leading international newspapers, to the framing of campaigns that drive media coverage of climate activism, linguistic choices do carry some weight. Previous research has argued that some terms (e.g. ‘global warming’) are more emotive; campaigners have criticised ‘climate change’ as a term for lacking urgency.

In a new open-access paper, researchers tested a wide range of different terms, including ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘climate crisis’, climate emergency’ and ‘climate justice’, in a survey of over 5000 US residents and concluded:

Overall, “climate change” and “global warming” were rated as most familiar and most concerning, and “climate justice” the least, with ratings for “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” falling in between.

Moreover, we find no evidence for “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” eliciting more perceived urgency than “climate change” or “global warming.”

We therefore recommend sticking with familiar terms, conclude that changing terminology is likely not the key solution for promoting climate action, and suggest alternative communication strategies.

The ‘alternative communication strategies’ might include identifying tangible ways in which audiences with different moral and political values could benefit from specific climate policies, or ensuring communities impacted by new energy infrastructure, or changes to urban travel systems, feel adequately consulted.

Confirming previous research around the general lack of familiarity with the term ‘climate justice’, the paper also noted that willingness to support climate-friendly policies and eat less red meat were lowest for ‘climate justice’ (which was the least familiar term tested).

This isn’t an argument for downplaying the importance of the issues the term refers to, which are central to both international climate governance and the implementation of specific in-country policies. But it does underscore the lack of recognition of the phrase among many public audiences, a finding which has also been observed in UK research.

 

Climate Barometer Tracker 21st April 2024

Tracker data: the public is split on whether climate campaigners are ‘out of touch’

Climate Barometer tracker data shows that over the past year, the number of people who agree that ‘people who campaign on climate issues are ‘out of touch’ with the rest of the country’ has increased (from 29% to 37%), while fewer people disagree (from 43% to 34%). Overall, the public is remains split: similar numbers are also unsure (30%).

This division reflects the tension at the heart of climate activism: how to challenge the status quo whilst avoiding alienating the people who, ultimately, campaigners aim to ‘win over’.

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