Fridays For Future: a study of digital activism in a leaderless era
Sophie Christine Wandzilak
12277118
MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture
June 23
rd, 2020
Abstract
This thesis explores the departure from centralised leadership as observed by the online behaviours and practices of the digital climate activist group Fridays For Future. The chosen movement is unique as its collective efforts and apparent leaderlessness are positioned around Greta Thunberg as a figurehead rather than the leader of the movement. To understand decentralised and centralised forms of leadership, a qualitative content analysis was conducted on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Each platform was analysed according to a coding agenda consisting of categories reflecting the overall aim of the movement, decentralised leadership (based on the ideology of horizontalism and the soft leadership form) and centralised, hierarchical leadership. Results of the qualitative content analysis indicate that the category reflecting the overall aim of the movement consists of approximately 40% more codes than leadership forms, supporting that Fridays For Future is operating within a new hybrid form of leadership. Moreover, although codes reflecting centralised leadership were detected, the analysis suggests that some of the online practices identified during the research support the distribution of the soft leadership form. Fridays For Future remains a successful digital activist group. The movement is inclusive rather than exclusive and, despite being founded at the end of 2018, has proven to overcome geographic barriers through online connectivity facilitated by social media platforms.
Keywords: Fridays For Future, digital activism, leadership, (cyber)populism, participatory culture and social media platforms.
Acknowledgments
First and most importantly, I want to thank my supervisor Michael Stevenson, who guided me in the most constructive way throughout this writing process. His advice and input helped in ensuring I remained on the right tracks, pushed me to develop my thinking-and-research skills and made the thesis writing enjoyable. Thank you, Michael!
I would also like to thank my mother. She helped me in remaining motivated to persevere during challenging times.
Further, my boss Marlie who has supported both my academic and professional career over the course of these past months.
Finally, I am thankful for Stephanie allowing me to call her spontaneously to discuss my ideas and encouraging me when I doubted myself.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 | Introduction 6
1.1 Activism in a digital world ……… 6
1.2 Fridays For Future, digital activism and leadership ……….. 7
1.3 Research questions and hypotheses ………... 9
1.4 Structure of this thesis ……… 9
Chapter 2 | Practices of contemporary digital activism 10
2.1 The digitisation of activism: social media, affordances and #MeToo ……….. 10
2.2 What affordances enable in the context of digital activism ……….. 14
2.3 Summary and next steps ……… 17
Chapter 3 | Networked and leaderless organisation of digital activists 17
3.1 The umbrella of digital activism: cyberpopulism ……….. 17
3.1.1 Shared leadership: horizontalism ……… 19
3.2 The aesthetics of collective and connective action ………... 20
3.3 Participatory culture and the spreading of user-generated content …………... 21
3.3.1 Practices of participatory culture: memes …………... 23
3.3.2 Limiting leadership to a ‘soft’ form …………... 25
3.4 Genres of digital activism for research purposes …………... 26
Chapter 4 | Methodology 28 4.1 Research questions and research design ……… 28
4.1.1 Deductive category application ……….. 29
4.1.2 Inductive category development ……… 30
4.2 Data collection ……….. 31
4.3 Data analysis ………. 33
Chapter 5 | Results 35
5.1 Results from deductive category application on each platform …………... 35
5.2 Results from inductive coding of each platform …………... 36
5.2.1 Facebook ……… 37
5.2.2 Instagram ……… 39
5.2.3 Twitter ……… 42
5.3 Results after combining each dataset ……… 45
Chapter 6 | Analysis of results and a discussion of their significance 46 6.1 Genres of digital activism on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter ……….. 47
6.2 Coding to understand leadership, the overall aim of the network and the significance of a participatory culture ……… 51
Chapter 7 | Conclusion 54
Chapter 1 | Introduction
During a recent conversation with former NASA astronaut Rusty Schweickart, he told me about his experience in testing the life support system of spacesuits. As part of the Apollo programme, he ensured that Neil Armstrong was able to safely walk on the moon’s surface. Rusty emphasised the Earth’s fragility with its thin, blue ozone layer and the importance of protecting it. To achieve this, Rusty wants to raise awareness about preserving our planet for future generations. This conversation inspired me to choose Fridays For Future and climate activism as research topics for this thesis.
1.1 Activism in a digital world
With social media practices having such an influential role in the digitisation of cultural and social practices, the concept of leadership is also changing. As social media plays a vital role in everyday tasks, the importance of platforms grows, forms of leadership therefore adapt and nowadays become more inclusive. Fridays For Future departs from the lineage of traditional leadership and instead created a new hybrid form of networked organisation with the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg as figurehead of this movement. By using Thunberg’s name and transforming it into a symbol to represent 21st century climate activism, the movement Fridays For Future can leverage her popularity to increase the spread of messages and gain global media attention whilst operating as a leaderless movement. To frame this research objective, this thesis will study digital activism of Fridays For Future in a leaderless era.
With new waves of activism currently unfolding in the world – the most recent one triggered by George Floyd’s death on 25 May 2020 – leaderless forms of activism are growing, proving to be very successful and a worthy topic for research (“George Floyd is remembered around the world,” 2020). When the unarmed Afro-American Floyd died because a Caucasian police officer knelt on his neck, the video footage taken by onlookers rapidly circulated the Internet. The event quickly made global headlines and reignited the Black Lives Matter movement. Since then, with Floyd as figurehead, protests erupted across the world to address racism and police violence, whilst demanding justice for Floyd and others who had the same or a similar fate. People utilise social media and follow the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement; millions of tweets and Instagram posts have been published to express outrage. On Instagram, the hashtag #georgefloyd was used 2.3 million times in the first two weeks after his death, “already nearly as often as #metoo (2.5m times since October 2017)” showing how
rapidly the group and its impact are growing (“George Floyd is remembered around the world,” 2020). It is hard to detect who is leading this wave of the Black Lives Matter movement and not yet clear what it will achieve, but the immediacy and reach of online technology makes socio-political activism very powerful.
Centralised versus decentralised forms of leadership have been the objects of research in the past. As will become clear in this thesis, there are various ideologies and practices that describe different waves of contemporary activism that are identifiable in both offline and online settings. However, there is a lack of research on how internationally dispersed activist groups can feed into a larger cause, when strategically positioning an individual as a figurehead of the movement. Therefore, this thesis will investigate (cyber)populist leadership forms by focusing on the online behaviours and practices of Fridays For Future through conducting a qualitative content analysis on the movement’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.
1.2 Fridays For Future, digital activism and leadership
When Thunberg started a school strike on Fridays to raise awareness about climate change, she may not have foreseen that she launched a global socio-political movement which changed the perception of climate activism. Thunberg rose to fame as a climate activist over the course of the last two years and, during this short period, she was invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has continued to receive attention and support from people around the world (Beeler, 2019). Her impact has grown from that of a young local, Swedish activist to an international climate activist of world renown. The movement founded by Thunberg is now called Fridays For Future and involves over 13,000,000 people globally across 7,500 cities dispersed on all continents (“Fridays For Future,” n.d.). Fridays For Future has developed into a global activist movement where followers can register their countries within the network and form local, country-specific groups. Thus, the movement consists of a collection of sub-groups that are spread throughout countries and create impact on a local scale. Fridays For Future is a collective movement, not a non-governmental organisation (NGO). The dispersed movement uses “word of mouth” enabled by platforms to coordinate protests and is “getting traction, even though they don’t have the resources, expertise, or professional organizing structures of major NGOs” (Hall et al., 2019).
Fridays For Future falls into the category of a digital activist group, which is defined as a “form of activism that uses the internet and digital media as key platforms for mass
mobilisation and political action. Digital activism has proved to be a powerful means of grassroots political mobilization and provides new way to engage protesters” (Fuentes, n.d.). As digital activism does not require people to physically go to a location, “online actions can be important in countries where public spaces are highly regulated or are under military control. In such cases, online actions are a better option than possibly physically dangerous “live” actions” (Fuentes, n.d.). Therefore, through making use of social media platforms, digital activism makes local voices heard and provides a measure of relative physical safety in totalitarian or autocratic regions. However, digital forms of activism also have limitations due to the dependency of the Internet and technologies to connect individuals to a forum of discussion and expression. Thus, there are constraints and opportunities that users – and activists – have at their disposal which guide what can and cannot be done (Gillespie, 2010). In online settings, affordances represent sociotechnical behaviours, referring to actions that can be carried out between technology and users. To explore the impact of social media platforms, the next chapter will introduce different contemporary waves of activism, and explain how digital activists position themselves around affordances and the design of platforms.
Technology and social media platforms have played a role in decentralising hierarchies and redistributing leadership roles. For 2020, it is predicted that 3.08 billion people will use social media globally and, by 2021, the number is expected to rise to 3.21 billion users (“Number of Social Media Users Worldwide 2010-2023,” n.d.). Particularly, social media provides a unique opportunity to target audiences, increase the number of followers and potentially create a network that has the ability to attract attention at a global scale. Digital activism and social media enable followers to become part of the organisational forces of a movement. By using social media to promote the cause of Fridays For Future, this movement is able to bypass the governmental, regulated channels, and by doing so, the roles of leadership are reallocated and encompass horizontal and soft leadership dynamics (Gerbaudo, 2012). “Horizontalists believe that thanks to the availability of modern technologies of communication social movements do not need a kind of linear command structure” because “everybody is a leader” (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 134). As networks are the forces and voices of socio-political change, tasks must be distributed amongst all leaders based on their skill set, describing the concept of soft leadership. To frame the aim of this thesis, and to position the objects that will be studied, research questions and hypotheses are needed.
1.3 Research questions and hypotheses
Thunberg continuously emphasises the “we” of her movement. She therefore employs the principles of horizontalism and ‘soft’ forms of leadership, shaping the movement to operate as a unified network. Thus, this thesis will explore the apparent leaderlessness of Fridays For Future and poses the following research question and hypothesis:
RQ1: How is decentralised leadership enacted by the Fridays For Future movement?
H1: The movement forms a collective identity based on their common goals. When examining the overall network, Fridays For Future is predicted to employ forms of leadership that distribute skills to share responsibilities, enabled through the networked connections social media platforms make available.
Further, platform design and affordances impact social media use through observable patterns; this leads to the following question and hypothesis:
RQ2: What does a qualitative content analysis on social media platforms of Fridays For Future (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) reveal about differences per platform and per audience?
H2: The Fridays For Future movement is globally dispersed but unified through social media platforms. In this thesis, it is expected to identify online behaviours and practices that indicate how the three social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter serve specific purposes for the digital climate activist group. Facebook is going to be used for the organisation and mobilisation of events and strikes. Instagram is positioned as a platform to create awareness and raise advocacy whilst Twitter is expected to be implemented for reactive measures.
1.4 Structure of this thesis
This thesis consists of chapters that guide the reader through the core topics and arguments. The introduction, chapter 1, outlines the research objects, explains their significance and presents the research questions and hypotheses. Chapter 2 describes how various contemporary practices of digital activism developed by positioning themselves around social media platforms and their affordances. Chapter 3 argues that (cyber)populist activists represent the will of the people. Further, by taking a horizontal and a ‘soft’ form of leadership, tasks can be shared with members of a movement, providing equal opportunities to contribute to the collective goal(s) based on the capabilities of individuals.
Chapter 4, the methodology, explains the qualitative research method employed to answer the research questions; the results will be described in chapter 5. The subsequent chapter 6 analyses the results in light of a horizontal, ‘soft’ form of leadership and the prevalence of these online practices on Fridays For Future’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages. Chapter 7, the conclusion, will reflect on the research and summarise the main findings of this thesis.
Chapter 2 | Practices of contemporary digital activism
This chapter introduces the discourse and the practices of digital activism. Prominent 21st century examples will be described to position the common theme of forgoing centralised leadership in favour of networked participation. The aim is to describe the digital landscape of socio-political activism and discuss different waves of activism that are all enabled through digital media and their affordances.
2.1 The digitisation of activism: social media, affordances and #MeToo
With the rise and continued integration of technologies, activism has evolved to make use of digital media to amplify a cause with more ease and shift networked participation from a hierarchy to a horizontal form. The digitisation of activism increases the accessibility of information, providing a mechanism to reach a larger audience through the Internet’s global network. According to the researcher Karatzogianni (2016) “digital activism has transformed political protest in the last two decades” by digitising activities that previously were carried out offline. Consequently, many people are now able to contribute to the overall goal of their network and share responsibilities, enabled through affordances of digital media. Due to the digitisation of activism, it now encompasses characteristics of decentralised leadership or leaderlessness.
By identifying the opportunities that digital media offers, the discourse of digital activism is very effective and “can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue a variety of other social goods” (McCafferty, 2011, p. 17). Digital activists are making use of various online opportunities such as blogs, social media and apps to increase the awareness of the general public about an issue (McCafferty, 2011, p. 17). By using online tools, there is a “constant flow of narratives” and an acceleration of news due to the instantaneous, global reach that is made available by the Internet (Poell, 2019, p. 4). Through a mix of online actions, digital activism depends less on
the geographic location of members, allowing an activist group to engage with audiences in countries at any given time. To feed the continuous flow of narratives, all members of a network are needed to spread their mission and share their organic will. Thus, the connected global network of digital activists needs a decentralised and horizontal structure in order to continuously produce, share and repurpose content. A globally dispersed network depends on many people’s active participation to fuel the overall goal of a movement. Through evaluating individual’s skill sets rather than employing traditional leadership tactics, leaderless organisation and rapid content circulation enables networks to produce high impact campaigns and gain attention globally.
The role of interconnectivity has to be acknowledged, as the Internet and social media platforms have produced a new environment of “political possibilities for social movements” that facilitates the development of networked leaderlessness (Barassi, 2017, p. 407). I suggest that the effective, global spreading of information is not attainable through a centralised hierarchy or a defined set of leaders in the context of digital activism. As online tools and social media platforms grow, the distribution and participation of the overall group requires more people to actively take on a role in content creation, sharing and distribution. The organisation of activism relies on technologies and their affordances, thus activists position themselves around these. As the two media scholars Bucher and Helmond state, “[t]he concept of affordance is multivalent” but, generally, it is “used to describe what material artifacts such as media technologies allow people to do” (Bucher & Helmond, 2018, p. 3). One important example of effectively using affordances on social media platforms is the hashtag and the so-called rise of “hashtag activism”.
The #MeToo movement is a powerful example of how one affordance shaped the organisation of a movement. “Hashtags serve as an indexing system on social media which allows users to sift through the cacophony of voices online to identify relevant topics and conversations” (Boatwright et al., 2019, p. 12). As shown by the success of the #MeToo movement, hashtags have become increasingly influential in activism by enabling participation “in conversations around social and political issues” through the “act of fighting for or supporting a cause with the use of hashtags as the primary channel to raise awareness of an issue and encourage debate via social media” (Boatwright et al., 2019, p. 12). Using the hashtag for strategic purposes reflects the wave of Do It Yourself (DIY) culture that facilitates civic engagement to favour networked leaderlessness, by changing leadership from a centralised top-down approach to a horizontal, decentralised tactic (Boatwright et al., 2019, p. 12). The impact
of the #MeToo movement depended on millions of people sharing their stories, contributing to a collective goal, in this case addressing the pervasiveness of sexual harassment (Garcia, 2017). If the #MeToo movement would operate within a centralised hierarchy, a second party would be responsible for choosing which stories to post, reducing the amount of accounts posted under the hashtag. The success of #MeToo depended on anyone being able to share a story. The affordance of the hashtag continues to offer members of this movement the freedom and opportunity to contribute anytime.
The #MeToo movement remains a vital example of a socio-political form of activism. Through sharing sexual abuse experiences, the network grew from a grassroot initiative to a global network, contributing towards reducing the stigma surrounding sexual harassment (Boatwright et al., 2019). By doing this, the archive of stories grew and people – predominantly women – from various races, economic backgrounds, religions and cultures shared their experiences. The #MeToo movement operated without a leader figure – although the founder of the movement is well known – and much like Fridays For Future also uses social media platforms and affordances to spread stories and organise collective action to raise awareness. Despite prosecution of some sexual offenders, for example Harvey Weinstein, the purpose of #MeToo was to give survivors of sexual abuse and harassment a voice and supportive environment to share their experiences. Anyone was welcome to contribute through #MeToo. Building upon this, the movement urged society to engage in broader and more complex discussions about sexual misconduct.
Using affordances and “virtual networks [that] accelerate the exchange of ideas” is very effective (Boatwright et al., 2019, p. 12). But the efficiency of digital activism depends on more than the strategic use of affordances and social media platforms to produce, organise, coordinate and communicate. Boatwright et al. identify three reasons why social media and digital activism form a ‘well-oiled machine’ (Boatwright et al., 2019). The first reason is that platforms “allow for rapid information exchange and dissemination beyond geographical boundaries”, thus enabling the spreading of content to occur within seconds (Boatwright et al., 2019, p. 12). The second reason is that social media allows users to generate their own content, express their opinions, share information within networks and “form communities based on personal relationships, shared characteristics, and interests” (Boatwright et al., 2019, p. 12). Third, social media allows for socio-political discussion and participation to occur through facilitating interactivity amongst members of a network (Boatwright et al., 2019). Thus,
technologies contribute towards paving “the way for social movements” and enable networks to operate within decentralised hierarchies (Pelini, 2019, p. 13).
The #MeToo movement and the Arab Spring protests have one thing in common - retroactive global recognition. The term ‘MeToo’ was originally created by Tarana Burke in 2006 (Garcia, 2017). Her aim was to raise awareness and point out the pervasiveness of sexual assault and harassment (Garcia, 2017). Nine years later the actress Alyssa Milano popularised the term ‘MeToo’ which developed into a worldwide globally acknowledged and known movement. Similarly, journalist Marc Lynch established the term ‘Arab Spring’ in his article about the volatile situation in many North African and Middle Eastern countries, one month after the first uprising in Egypt and Tunisia in 2010 (Toumi, 2011). These are two examples of activism and national level protests that spread due to the use of social media and developed into international movements. Fridays For Future always references the movement by name and links to social media pages (specifically Facebook) so that people can access organisational information of offline actions. The uprising in the Arab world also used social media platforms and affordances – such as the hashtag – for organisational purposes only, as depicted in the figures below. The protestors did not name themselves Arab Spring but mainly used Facebook as an organisational tool to share information about offline actions by directing people to the platform and creating hashtags to access protest information. Compared to #MeToo and Fridays For Future, the Arab Spring movement did not create and promote a name for the series of protests.
Figures 1, 2 and 3: Posters used during the Arab Spring. Members of the Arab Spring protests use Facebook
and hashtags for organisational purposes to link to information about offline actions. Unlike Fridays For Future and the ‘MeToo’ movement, protestors did not name themselves Arab Spring, as can be seen in the lack of including any name in posters. Figures 1 & 2 retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com, 2017. Figure 3 retrieved from https://globelynews.com/, 2020.
2.2 What affordances enable in the context of digital activism
The digitisation of activism has led to new waves of online activism, passive or active. A passive form of activism entails a spectrum of online practices such as a thumbs up (‘like’) or signing a petition but are only present online. In comparison to the examples discussed in the previous section, the digitisation of activism also results in passive engagement, explaining so-called “slacktivism”. Morozov (2009) describes this phenomenon “where our digital effort makes us feel very useful and important but have zero social impact. When the marginal cost of joining yet another Facebook group are low, we click “yes” without even blinking, but the truth is that it may distract us from helping the same cause in more productive ways. Paradoxically, it often means that the very act of joining a Facebook group is often the end – rather than the beginning – of our engagement with a cause, which undermines much of digital activism” (Morozov, 2009). “Slacktivism” is a term that describes the act of purely engaging with activists online, there is no interaction offline. From an etymological point of view, the
term infers a lack of impact due to insufficient effort and respective engagement or participation in a movement.
Based on Morozov’s criticism, “slacktivism” has a negative connotation, but the affordances of social media platforms enable this type of engagement. Moreover, despite his arguments, the signing of petitions or signifying support through a thumbs up can produce engagement and participation, only to a lesser degree. There is a consistency how people engage and respond to actions online. As activism has evolved to make use of online platforms, the level of engagement has changed: “[t]oday’s activists are highly plugged into social media, mobile apps, and other digital tools. But does this make a difference where it matters most?” (McCafferty, 2011, p. 17) The Internet has enabled digital activism to adapt a more horizontal and leaderless organisation. However, this also poses a threat to digital activism. Following Morozov’s criticism (2009), affordances and social media platforms make showing minimal support through clicking a ‘like’ button too easy and produces zero impact. Yet, what constitutes towards active, meaningful digital activism? According to Gladwell meaningful (digital) activism “requires strong, robust organizational structure” to empower a cause (McCafferty, 2011, p. 17). As a result, success requires people to take on shared responsibilities and also produce a strong offline presence.
In 2013, a study by Philip Howard at the University of Washington revealed the degree of difficulty in successfully launching and maintaining an online campaign and offline presence. Out of approximately 2,000 campaigns launched between 2011 and 2013, only 400 to 500 campaigns remained active at the end of this period (Kelley, 2013). The challenge in gaining attention and continuously engaging audiences over a longer period of time is hard. To tackle this, extreme actions are sometimes employed to remain relevant and capture the attention of the public. So-called “hacktivism” is an example of extreme action to gain and retain audience attention and reflects Gladewell’s criteria that are needed for successful activism. George and Leidner (2019) define it “hacktivism” as “hacking to achieve social or political objectives. Hacktivists target governments, organizations, and individuals. Hacking is triggered by an event or policy or when one group appears to be gaining an advantage over another” (p. 10). Under the cloak of anonymity and through leveraging online affordances “hacktivists” engage in extreme and often illegal activities to achieve their demands or ambitions (George & Leidner, 2019). The goal is not to influence but to “embod[y] direct action” (George & Leidner, 2019, p. 11). “Hacktivists” see themselves as “cyber-militia” who can carry out actions and produce results that a government is unable to (George & Leidner,
2019, p. 11). “Hacktivists” are the opposite of a centralised government and, when compared to a government, are leaderless. The most well-known “hacktivist” group is Anonymous. Not only does this network use extreme means to gather data (for example, hacking into servers to gather and publish classified information), but the group positions itself as unstoppable with limitless access to digital information made available by platform affordances.
Although Anonymous is intriguing, specifically when analysing leaderlessness, little is known about the group. “The collective has not endorsed any political ideology or stance although most of its activities point toward a revolutionary orientation. Mobilisation of people who can speak truth to power seems to be the agenda - one that they seek to achieve via cyberwars and attacks” (Disha, 2020). Anonymous is perceived as a leaderless group, as inferred by the logo of the network - a ‘man without a head’. This logo indicates everyone is equal since the group itself does not have a face or a leader (Figure 4). During public appearances members of the group wear masks and include voiceovers in their videos to conceal their identities (Eordogh, 2013). Hacktivism – and Anonymous – aim to create impact, not receive praise, and through their extreme methods are proving to be successful. As mentioned earlier, little in know about Anonymous, their portrayal of leaderlessness is inferred through observing the network. A common thread of so-called “hashtag activism”, “slacktivism”, “hacktivism” and other waves of digital activism is the strategic use of digital technologies, the Internet, social media and, most significantly, affordances.
Figure 4: Anonymous YouTube channel. The faceless logo indicates that members are equal, nobody has an
2.3 Summary and next steps
Digital activism uses social media platforms and affordances as mechanisms to flatten hierarchies. It is clear that social media platforms have become “a new repertoire of political action, and that the study of “social media activism” is an urgent topic of inquiry in the social sciences because it could shed light on the social complexities of contemporary forms of political participation” (Barassi, 2017, p. 407). To raise awareness about social and political issues, networked movements are necessary to inform and change the perception of human actions and their impact on the planet (Castells, 2009). This extensive goal has been broken down by Fridays For Future to confront society’s relationship with nature. “The way we think about nature determines the way we treat nature – and the way nature treats us” (Castells, 2009, p. 305). It is clear that leaderlessness is a relevant socio-political debate that is continuously changing through new waves of digital activism. Therefore, the next chapter will present different theories and concepts, the discourse and practices of digital activism as sub-genres of the ideology of (cyber)populism.
Chapter 3 | Networked and leaderless organisation of digital activists
As the previous chapter shows, digital activism is marked by behaviours and practices that suggest a leaderless organisation, networked rather than centralised control and overall participation rather than clearly defined roles for members of movements. To understand these characteristics of digital activism, in this chapter I discuss the ideologies of cyberpopulism and horizontalism, before explaining how these ideologies reflect contemporary practices of connective action. Practices described through the example of memes will be positioned in the context of broader tendencies of participatory culture as well as forms of soft leadership. By outlining how the ideologies of cyberpopulism and horizontalism are manifested in specific practices of digital activism, I set the stage for my own subsequent research of how leadership is organised by members of the Fridays For Future movement.
3.1 The umbrella of digital activism: cyberpopulism
The ideology of populism is rooted in politics and describes giving people – who feel disregarded – a voice by actively participating in events and shaping the outcome. The broad and contemporary goals of digital activists are to enact change but to achieve this, the online environment, the mindset and tools used must reflect the ideology. By integrating online media and tools – such as social media platforms – into the communication process, a populist
approach of activism is reflected through behaviours and practices in an offline and online setting. As an outcome, the organic will of people is shared in communication processes that once were structured and exclusive, but now facilitate direct and decentralised communication (Engesser et al., 2017). As cyberpopulism entails a decentralised environment, people who want to raise awareness about an issue now have the tools and opportunity to do so. In the context of this chapter, the structure of this thesis and the subsequent research, I use cyberpopulism to describe the online environment and shared mindset that digital activists make use of; thus, the ideology is the umbrella that all other arguments fall under.
Engesser et al. (2017) state that populism is a “semantically interrelated” ideology which has led to misunderstandings about the definition (p.1280). To define the meaning of this ideology, in the context of digital activism, I refer to Gerbaudo’s description of cyberpopulism to explain the socio-political circumstances that have contributed in paving a decentralised and effective online environment for activists. “[C]yberpopulism approaches the Internet as a “popular space”, a generic space which is populated by ordinary citizens, and mostly dedicated to non-political activities, such as gossip, celebrity culture, or interpersonal communication, but which can nevertheless be politicised, and turned towards the purpose of popular mobilisation” (Gerbaudo, 2017, p. 477). Based on this definition, I suggest that the socio-political mindset of cyberpopulism creates an opportunity to embody the will of the people to acknowledge grassroot movements. This challenges traditional politics and creates two parties – digital activists and politics – that contrast each other through operating as a decentralised and centralised network respectively.
Castells argues that social media platforms create “mass self-communication” and networked communication to enhance “the opportunities for social change” (Castells, 2009, p. 8). Social media platforms are user-centric, meaning that individual users are in control of their own profile by choosing their photo, selecting which pages to follow, what to share and whom to connect with. To understand how mass self-communication and opportunities for social change are created and carried out by digital activists, I propose analysing social media platforms to comprehend the will and mission of a digital network. Based on the online environment that is described, I now shift the focus to the forms of action and leadership styles that facilitate networked organisation, decentralised leadership and digital activism. It is important to acknowledge that social media platforms are continuously evolving; however, by analysing classic concepts such as leadership and online organisation, invisible processes, behaviours and practices can be evaluated to understand a space where different challenges
have the power to unite people (Castells, 2009; Fiore & McLuhan 1967). Throughout this chapter, I position additional ideologies, concepts and theories under cyberpopulism, based on my argument that the first step towards success of digital activism rests on the right online environment and socio-political acknowledgment of behaviours and practices.
3.1.1 Shared leadership: horizontalism
Cyberpopulism points towards new, decentralised forms of networked organisation to present the organic will of the people. The ideology of horizontalism is a starting point in recognising forms of decentralised leadership (leaderlessness) which will be explored through the broader tendencies of participatory culture and soft leadership later in this chapter. The socio-political ideology of horizontalism suggests equitable distribution of leadership and power in a digital activist group. The literal description of the word infers that a horizontal line results in shared leadership, in contrast to vertical or top-down leadership that is regulated by an authority. Horizontalism describes “networks without centres” and is both identifiable in online and offline networks, inferring a lack of a centralised leader figure (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 22). According to Castells (2009), using horizontal communication and mainstream media to convey messages “increase[s] [digital activists’] chances of enacting social and political change – even if they start from a subordinate position” (p. 302). Gerbaudo argues that horizontalists are similar to choreographers whose scene-setting role creates “a degree of coherence to people’s spontaneous and creative participation in the protest movements” (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 13). Thus, horizontal leadership is suggested to predominantly fuel the organisation of movements, reflecting the approach of networked but leaderless organisation as a vital practice of digital activism.
Even so, does a network need a core group of actors who continuously remain dedicated to the cause? Following the logic of “reduction ad unum”, there has to be a “fusion of individuals into a collective actor” but this does not lead to a lack of leadership (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 20). Successful collective networks consist of a dedicated group of members who instead of working as a hierarchy work together as a team. Horizontalists acknowledge that there must be a sense of togetherness and shared leadership (Gerbaudo, 2012). This togetherness and shared leadership can entail a range of actions. In general, organisation depends on the logic of connective action – utilising online means to communicate – because the spread of messages is contingent on reaching the right audiences. However, someone – whether it is one person or a group of people – needs to take these decisions. Thus “reluctant
leaders” must assume a fraction of a leadership role to initiate processes of networked organisation (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 13). As a next step, to elaborate how these two contemporary ideologies align with collective and connective actions in the context of generating a sense of togetherness, I refer to Bennett and Segerberg’s The Logic of Connective Action (2013) to highlight the flexibility of social media platforms and the significance of collective and connective action.
3.2 The aesthetics of collective and connective action
Bennett and Segerberg (2013) break down the aesthetics of activism and, by doing so, characterise movements by observable behaviours and offer a lens to analyse offline (collective) and online (connective) practices. Historically, collective activism operated within a hierarchy and therefore depended on a group working as one entity and being – to some degree – centralised. Using the collective action for research purposes simplifies one group into roles, such “as [the] ‘propagandist’, ‘agitator’ and ‘organiser’ of collective action” that reflect centralised organisation (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 4). Yet, connective action has evolved to encompass action that goes beyond the evaluation of historical forms of activism. Nowadays, the organisational success of collective actions depends on connective online action because the digital environment and the opportunities available and create a connected, digital network. Offline, collective action depends on connective, online organisation. Thus, treating these two actions as intertwined processes better describes the overlapping and flexible processes that social media platforms offer digital activists.
Bennett and Segerberg claim that social media platforms increase connectivity for social movements, linking back to the ideology of cyberpopulism and the decreased need of defined leadership. However, as Gerbaudo points out, the affordances of social media can be used for political motives that represent different incentives. For example, as there is a continuous growth in issues being addressed, political institutions are unable to respond “to widespread social grievances” (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 42). To respond to some of the grievances, politicians are communicating with people in online (connective) spaces. U.S. President Donald Trump uses Twitter frequently to voice his beliefs and, by doing so, shifts the function and organisational purposes of social media to support his political and centralised incentives. It is important to acknowledge that social media platforms are flexible communication tools. Moreover, through the endless amounts of platforms that are available, the digital landscape is oversaturated with information. Thus, collective action provides a lens to show the importance
of unity that does not exclusively depend on technology as argued by Morozov in his critique of “slacktivism” (2009). Even so, there is a paradox about the closeness of digital activists as they depend on virtual proximity and less on physical closeness (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Gerbaudo, 2012). With the quest to remain connected by means of a movement, arguably people are isolating themselves by living in a “mediated capsule” (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 35). However, this mediated capsule has had a positive impact in elevating barriers due to the combination of collective and connective actions. The overlap between collective and connective action and horizontalism highlights the importance of participation in a network. As online content is becoming more user-generated, the producers of online content now have more control over what users are exposed to and consume in their online experience; thus, the nature of social media has shifted to encompass a participatory culture as the production process is fuelled by individual and networked users. By integrating Jenkins et al.’s Spreadable Media (2013) into this chapter, I will use the concepts of participatory culture and spreadability to explain the practice of spreading memes. Through these observed practices and their discussion, the arguments will show that these specific goals of contemporary activism point towards leadership that is limited to ‘soft’ forms.
3.3 Participatory culture and the spreading of user-generated content
As platforms grow, they become an essential part of everyday life; therefore, the way people interact and are exposed to content has changed. Content production has also experienced a shift and nowadays anybody can contribute in the production and circulation of online materials. The way in which human behaviours and traditions are now represented online is determined by platformisation, a term that “can be defined as the penetration of economic, governmental, and infrastructural extensions of digital platforms into the web and app ecosystes, fundamentally affecting the operations of the cultural industries” (Nierborg & Poell, 2018, p. 4276). The outcomes of online representations of human practices are the formation of online cultures that make use of the affordances – functionalities – of platforms to address economic, governmental, and infrastructural issues (Nieborg & Poell, 2018). Through the malleable and data driven design of platforms, they are constantly evolving to meet the ever-growing needs and practices of users and have further reallocated power to users as important parties of content creation. From a global perspective, the reallocation of power has decentralised the influence companies and governments have on individual users; instead of informing society what should be done, the beliefs and practices of users are playing an
important role in shaping how centralised institutions target audiences with a more inclusive and neutral approach.
In 1992, Jenkins devised the term participatory culture to “describe the cultural production and social interactions of fan communities” (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 2). Nowadays, audiences “are making their presence felt by actively shaping media flows” which is another form of power being reallocated through the use of the Internet and social media platforms (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 2). Participatory culture defines how a group of people create their own culture which they actively participate in-and-towards the spreading of key messages. This “participatory model of culture, … sees the public not as simply consumers of preconstructed messages but also as people who are shaping, sharing, reframing, and remixing media content in ways which might not have been previously imagined” (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 2). Not only does participatory culture depend on the flexible environment produced by the decentralised nature of the Internet, but participatory nature itself fuels decentralisation and a horizontal approach by suggesting that anyone can actively contribute to the shaping of online discourses. Jenkins’ fundamental claim is that through participatory culture overall participation increases and has the potential to create meaningful impact (Jenkins et al., 2013). In an attempt to achieve this, audiences are proactive and make their online presence known (Jenkins et al., 2013). Much like the ideology of cyberpopulism, participatory culture describes the environment in which grassroot movements have the opportunity to make their presence known (Jenkins et al., 2013). Building upon this, participatory culture also defines the collaborative nature that current activism makes use of (Jenkins et al., 2013).
So far, the majority of this chapter has integrated different ideologies and concepts to explain the various aspects that have contributed towards cyberpopulism. Through acknowledging the need to create spreadable content, I now discuss a second concept from Jenkins et al.’s book and focus on a current example of connective online behaviour. This will exemplify the decentralised nature of social media platforms and how users are able to contribute towards content creation, publication and circulation. Spreadability refers “to the technical resources that make it easier to circulate some kinds of content than others, the economic structures that support or restrict circulation, the attributes of a media text that might appeal to a community’s motivation for sharing material, and the social networks that link people through the exchange of meaningful bytes” (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 4). Spreadability offers a lens to understand the practices of content distribution; the importance of connections on social media platforms are amplified and contribute to the overall understanding of the value
of online connectivity amongst activists. From a production perspective, content that is shared needs to be appealing to be circulated, seen and repurposed for a wider range of goals. Jenkins et al.’s claim that participatory culture is a prerequisite to successfully spread messages which is offered by affordances such as sharing, liking and posting on social media accounts. In order for effective spreadability, participation is required, and vice versa.
3.3.1 Practices of participatory culture: memes
One of the most important aspects of spreadability is acknowledging the importance of users (Jenkins et al., 2013). First, practices of online users can be detected by acknowledging the environment that participatory culture and spreadability occur in. Second, the remixing of content, by sharing beliefs spreads, the will of a movement. An example of online content that is very spreadable and engages the participation of online cultures are memes. According to Gruger, a meme is “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media” (“Definition of Meme,” n.d.). Memes are controversial to some degree as often taboos or sensitive topics are represented in a humorous way, but they are successful as many people can relate to them; a different version of the will of the people is generated through humorous content. One of the most popular memes of the 2010’s was the grumpy cat meme (please see Figure 5 below) which “frowned its way onto the Internet” (“Definition of Meme,” n.d.).
Figure 5: Grumpy Cat meme. An example of user generated content that rapidly spreads in the Internet.
Retrieved from https://www.newsweek.com, 2017.
The image of Grumpy Cat was edited to include satirical texts of ‘everyday struggles’ that relate and appeal to a large audience. Memes are images which address a topic in a satirical
manner. By having ironic visual representations of common thoughts, politics and ‘goals in life’, a highly spreadable media format is produced to address a multitude of topics (please see Figure 6 and 7 below for further examples). The power of memes lies in the participatory culture, making memes a mechanism of uniting people across various cultures that have a shared belief. Moreover, memes can be used to desensitise topics or bring attention towards issues. Creative audiences emerge and remix messages, and as a result, the range of communication practices found online are diversifying (Castells, 2000).
Figures 6 & 7: Examples of mainstream media memes. Scenes from Game of Thrones and The Hobbit to
make fun of common thoughts and experiences. Retrieved from https://www.twitter.com, n.d.
Memes exist as a form of self-expression and communication because they address a real event or issue through critical commentary in contemporary society. As the Internet evolved, people had to master new abilities and understand the new, technical media landscape. Technological innovations created a need for users to become media literate in order to access, understand, create and interact with different formats of media. Through the changing of the technological and media landscape, online users were able to take on a proactive role in sharing content with global audiences. It is not surprising that user-generated content started occurring in 2008, a few years after Facebook became publicly available. The importance of platforms grew exponentially with the rise of social media and online representations of cultural values and social practices. By remixing ideas communicated through mainstream media, user-generated content now spreads to global audiences. Platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Giphy are fuelled by user-generated content, meaning “any type of content
information created by users. This can be in the form of videos, digital photos and other types of media belonging to an online platform which is made available to other end users” (Kang, 2019). This effect produces two outcomes: first, platforms have shifted to be connective and reflect a decentralised cyberpopulist environment. Second, brands and companies had to adjust how they target audiences, playing on their interests, to meet corporate economic goals. As users produce and share ideas, they have the predetermined power to (re)shape the world in relation to how they are approached and perceived by traditional institutions. The playing grounds have been balanced, to some extent.
3.3.2 Limiting leadership to a ‘soft’ form
So far, the contemporary practices of digital activists have been explored in terms of the broader tendencies of participatory culture through focusing on the spreading of memes. The practice of spreading memes depends on the distribution of tasks which is done by utilising the skill set of individuals to the advantage of the broader aims of a network. Leadership is not eliminated by decentralised online spaces where participatory culture is present. Instead cyberpopulist movements are positioned around the practice of soft leadership. This type of leadership suggests that there are multiple roles open to members of a network; these roles need to be filled by individuals who have the right skill set to fill gaps. The distribution of tasks is allocated by having a qualified person able to fulfil and perform an action with their knowledge, skills and expertise. As an outcome, soft leaders consider members of their network partners rather than competitors. Soft leadership has a different priority than traditional leadership as “[s]oft leadership places emphasis more on people to get the tasks done” whilst traditional forms of leadership focus on the transaction of tasks (Rao, 2013, p. 144). The goals of soft leadership are achieved by being people-oriented and not task-oriented (Rao, 2013). Also, wealth and social status do not come into play in the sharing and carrying out of tasks (Rao, 2013). As an outcome, this form of leadership operates on people’s skills rather than status (Rao, 2013).
Analysing skill sets and merits creates a fair opportunity to contribute towards tasks to produce organisational effectiveness and success (Rao, 2013). On a psychological and emotional level, these triumphs create meaning in people’s lives. This win-win approach, which soft leadership is founded on, manages uncertainty and strives towards achieving (long-term) goals and attaining set tasks through an organisational, near-term operational, individual and long-term strategic perspective (Rao, 2013). The term soft leadership infers that this
principle is a type of leadership and I challenge this. In the context of this chapter, upcoming research and analysis, I use soft leadership as a theory to position shared responsibilities. As argued before, networks must be filled by what Gerbaudo refers to as reluctant leaders, who focus on how their knowledge can contribute to participating within a decentralised network. Yet, to analyse and understand the digital activism from a theoretical perspective, a framework to classify types of online activism and reliance on the Internet has to be integrated.
3.4 Genres of digital activism for research purposes
To offer a framework to help in the upcoming research and provide a structure to position the communication, organisation and the suggested hybrid, decentralised form of digital activism, the collection of works in Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice (2003) are useful. This text introduces clear definitions of a broad set of behaviours and practices of digital activists defined by Vegh. When constructing a framework to classify types of online activism, three genres (awareness/advocacy, action/reaction and organisation/mobilisation) are proposed to compare and contrast theory with observed online behaviours and practices. These typologies emphasise the direct action and decentralised operation that contemporary digital activists make use of (Vegh, 2003).
The first genre of digital activism is awareness/advocacy. Despite Vegh not defining how these genres build on each other, I suggest that this genre represents the will and mission of digital activists: the aim to capture and retain audience attention to increase the awareness and raise advocacy towards issues. If people are not aware of movements, these would fail. Digital activists aim for social or political change and by “getting the message out there” public awareness is altered (Rees, n.d.). According to Vegh, “public awareness is achieved by accessing information that is relevant to the cause” (Vegh, 2003, p. 125). Therefore, the overall objective of traditional and digital activism is to create advocacy, raise public awareness to empower and connect individuals to take on collective action (Obar et al., 2012). Online practices that represent the genre of awareness/advocacy are the use of petitions and online campaigns, designed to increase public awareness and stimulate a level of participation both offline and online. When reflecting on the use of social media platforms, the narrative created to target the interest of people mostly links to the storytelling functionality of Instagram because here personal stories are added and shared with a follower base through publishing images with captions.
As users become increasingly aware of their active roles in shaping content production and circulation, the purpose of a post, picture or video can have active or reactive motivations. Vegh’s second genre of action/reaction can be interpreted as cause-and-effect relationship; a need is identified and filled through examining which members of a network can do this task based on their knowledge and merits. Action/reaction can occur both offline and online, for example, when reacting to events on Twitter by sharing multiple tweets to challenge or support claims made. According to Vegh, this genre is predominantly fuelled by so-called “hacktivists” who are proactive and politically motivated to produce solutions. However, I expand this genre as the second step of organisation. In the context of activism, organising offline events is another form of reaction and action in response to events. On Friday, the 20th of September 2019, an estimated 4 million people demonstrated to raise awareness about the climate crisis (Barclay & Resnick, 2019). “It was likely the largest climate protest in world history” organised by Fridays For Future in response to the continuous issues surrounding climate change (Barclay & Resnick, 2019).
Vegh’s proposed genres of digital activism fail to show the importance of organisation and mobilisation and I propose that this genre is, in fact, the most important of the three - without organised and well-coordinated actions, all other initiatives fall short. The social media platform that currently offers affordances which help in organising events is Facebook. Further, this genre (organisation/mobilisation) is most applicable to both centralised and decentralised institutions and movements. For example, in 2017, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched Sentinel-5P, a satellite with the capacity to map levels of air pollution. During the last three years, the satellite captured a multitude of images to visually depict different levels of air pollution in the world. The project itself required multi-national organisation to ensure the successful building and launching of the satellite. As the inventory of images and data grew, ESA started to target the public via social media to share images depicting air pollution levels. This was done in an effort to raise awareness about pollution, showing the complexity of all three genres as they are fluid and overlap in multiple scenarios. As indicated by the above example of ESA, the genre organisation/mobilisation is the first step in identifying goals that will later on serve purposes described by the other two genres: action/reaction and awareness/advocacy.
This chapter has used the umbrella of cyberpopulism to position horizontal and soft leadership as outcomes of an emancipated online environment. Contemporary connective practices are therefore enabled and result in more participation, reaching global audiences.
Connective practices and the spreading of memes have been used to contextualise the distribution of tasks along the form of soft leadership through networked organisation in a leaderless movement. All three genres of Vegh will be integrated into the upcoming research in order to evaluate the suggested (cyber)populist mindset, online behaviours and practices in the context of a horizontal and ‘soft’ form of leadership. The next chapter of this thesis will present the methodology to conduct a qualitative content analysis to address the two proposed research questions and expected outcomes by using digital climate activist group Fridays For Future as a case study of a new hybrid way of positioning a figurehead instead of a leader.
Chapter 4 | Methodology
This research explores decentralised leadership and genres of contemporary digital activism through an analysis of the use of social media platforms by the climate activist movement Fridays For Future. A qualitative content analysis will be conducted based on Mayring’s (2000) deductive and inductive category development and application. The aim is to evaluate how this movement departs from centralised leadership and creates a new hybrid form of a networked organisation that is globally dispersed and coordinated.
4.1 Research questions and research design
To explore the nature of decentralised leadership and social media use of Fridays For Future, I will analyse the posted content on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the context of the two research questions:
RQ1: How is decentralised leadership enacted by the Fridays For Future movement? RQ2: What does a qualitative content analysis on social media platforms of Fridays For Future (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) reveal about differences per platform and per audience?
Qualitative content analysis allows qualitative concepts to be positioned within a framework. This research method enables a “methodological controlled analysis of texts within their context of communication, following content analytical rules and step by step models” (Mayring, 2000, p. 2). This approach facilitates a robust study of qualitative concepts such as soft leadership and horizontalism. Following Mayring’s approach of qualitative content analysis, systematic categories will be created to focus on the different forms of leadership on online platforms. The data collection is split into two phases based on deductive and inductive
categories. The first phase of data collection utilises Vegh’s genres of digital activism to deductively categorise the online behaviours of Fridays For Future. After the initial data is recorded, further inductive categories are added as an additional layer of analysis. This two-step approach produces a structured interpretation of content.
In this research Fridays For Future is used as a case study for understanding contemporary digital activism, specifically focusing on the overall aim of the movement, decentralised and centralised leadership, opportunities of content creation and its circulation on social media platforms. The sampling was done on the official pages of Fridays For Future on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
4.1.1 Deductive category application
I expect to find that Fridays For Future utilises Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for strategic purposes. Vegh’s genres of digital activism help in gaining an overview of how online behaviours and practices are positioned on social media. The three genres Vegh suggests are comprised of the following paired concepts: awareness/advocacy, action/reaction and organisation/mobilisation. Vegh’s first genre, awareness/advocacy encapsulates the overall aim of a digital activist group: to inspire, educate and organise action. The second genre, action/reaction, helps in identifying the practices of posting a series of rapid-fire communication and reactions in response to events. The third genre, organisation/mobilisation, frames (offline) actions, for example, when a group takes collective action through a protest or a strike. These three genres are used as categories to collect and interpret the first set of data. More specifically, this deductive application of categories helps in understanding specific behaviours and practices that are related to the overall identity of Fridays For Future. This first phase of data collection allows for online behaviours and practices to be categorised to highlight the differences per audience and per platform. Below, Table 1 shows the deductive categories in a coding agenda.
Genres of digital activism Category
Genre 1: awareness/advocacy Inspire, educate and organise action
Genre 2: action/reaction Rapid-fire communication as a response to an event
Genre 3: organisation/mobilisation Frames offline action and organisation e.g. strikes and protests
Table 1: Coding agenda of deductive categories by applying Vegh’s genres of digital activism.
4.1.2 Inductive category development
Based on the first phase of data collection, I observe that the social media platforms reflect strategic practices by Fridays For Future. Thus, additional inductive categories are chosen to further analyse how the overall aim of the movement, decentralised and centralised leadership forms are observable in the posts of Fridays For Future. Saldaña’s The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (2009) is utilised to develop the set of categories that correlate with Vegh’s genres of digital activism. This approach to coding has been employed by a wide range of researchers to investigate the relationship between online leadership and digital activism (Pelini, 2019; Saldaña, 2009). Success of the research rests on the “excellence of the coding” (Saldaña, 2009, p. 25). A code is a descriptive term assigned to represent the primary topic of variables being studied (Saldaña, 2009). Codes are used to summarise or condense data, but must be carefully and consistently applied (Saldaña, 2009).
The coding system developed for this research has been designed to assess the overall aim of the network, decentralised leadership and centralised leadership. The overall aim of the network is used as an umbrella category, meaning that all other categories fall under it. The first category is coded by observing the themes to educate, change and inspire. Themes are used rather than specific words to code educational and inspirational posts that strive for change. The second category of decentralised leadership is reflected by soft leadership (skill-based task allocation) and horizontalism (reluctant leaders taking on shared leadership roles). This second category is assigned the following codes: “you/r”, “our” and “we/us”. The third category of centralised leadership is coded to reflect the practice of tagging usernames and the inclusion of the following codes: “Thunberg” and “leader/I”. Below, Table 2 depicts the coding agenda used for the application of the inductive categories.
Table 2: Coding agenda of inductive categories and codes. Source: Mayring, 2000.
4.2 Data collection
For both phases of the research, posts by Fridays For Future are sampled from all three social media platforms. Due to the interpretive nature of the research, tools from the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) are not used in this research. The aim is to create a manageable yet significant dataset for quantitative analysis through manual data collection; thus, 200 posts were sampled on each platform. In total, 600 posts between October 2018 and February 2020 in German, English and Dutch are included in the dataset, all sourced from the following three profiles:
1. The Fridays For Future International Facebook page 2. Fridays For Future Instagram page
3. Fridays4Future Twitter page
Category Definition Example Coding rule Codes
Overall aim of the movement
Posts of an educational nature (underlying theme is to inspire and educate people by striving for change)
“Today, 300k (!) students flooded the streets across Germany. Yes we’re scared about our future. But we’re so ready to fight for it.
#fridaysforfuture” (Twitter “Fridays4Future”)
Event promotion, inspiring and spreading awareness about climate change must be a theme observed in the post
Themes: Educate, change and inspire Decentralised leadership: soft leadership and horizontalism (leaderlessness)
Posts that do not include the names of individuals and encourage
togetherness
“Yesterday at @Fridays4FutureU in Uganda dedicated the
digital #ClimateStrike to #AfricaDay2020. We invite everyone to join the action on Monday to
stand in against deforestation that's destroying our environment. Remember to #KeepMamaAfricaGreen #AfricaDay
Join us:
https://m.facebook.com/events/5682958741233 16”
(Facebook “Fridays For Future International”)
No tagging of individuals and usernames. The underlying theme is a sense of achieving goals together “You/r”, “our” and “we/us” Centralised leadership
Posts that reference specific individuals, promote people or praise initiatives. Praise or promotion is geared towards an individual
“#repost @youthstrike4climate Tick. Tock. People of all ages have had enough. The
Climate Crisis must be stopped.”
*Including video of Thunberg holding a clock*
(Instagram “Fridays For Future”)
Tagging of usernames, praising an individual, post is focused on one person rather than the collective – or local – network
“Thunberg”, “leader” and “I”
