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 23rd, 2020

Supervisor: Dr. M.P. Stevenson 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.

2 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.

3 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 4.4 Ethical considerations and limitations of the approach ……..……………….. 34

4 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 8 | Bibliography 57

5 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

6 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

7 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.

8 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.

9 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

10 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

11 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,

12 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.

13

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

14 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,

15 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 individual face. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/user/AnonymousWorldvoce, n.d.

16 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

17 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

18 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

19 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

20 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

21 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

22 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

23 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

24 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

25 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.

26 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.

27 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

28 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. Source: Vegh, 2003.

29 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.

30 Category Definition Example Coding rule Codes

Overall aim of Posts of an educational “Today, 300k (!) students flooded the streets Event promotion, inspiring Themes: the movement nature (underlying theme across Germany. Yes we’re scared about our and spreading awareness Educate, is to inspire and educate future. But we’re so ready to fight for it. about climate change must be change and people by striving for #fridaysforfuture” a theme observed in the post inspire change) (Twitter “Fridays4Future”)

Decentralised Posts that do not include “Yesterday at @Fridays4FutureU in Uganda No tagging of individuals and “You/r”, leadership: soft the names of individuals dedicated the usernames. The underlying “our” and leadership and and encourage digital #ClimateStrike to #AfricaDay2020. We theme is a sense of achieving “we/us” horizontalism togetherness invite everyone to join the action on Monday to goals together (leaderlessness) 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”)

Centralised Posts that reference “#repost @youthstrike4climate Tick. Tock. Tagging of usernames, “Thunberg”, leadership specific individuals, People of all ages have had enough. The praising an individual, post is “leader” and promote people or praise Climate Crisis must be stopped.” focused on one person rather “I”

initiatives. Praise or than the collective – or local – *Including video of Thunberg holding a clock* promotion is geared (Instagram “Fridays For Future”) network towards an individual

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

31 The same method of data collection is used for all three social media platforms. For the first phase of the research, I scrolled back to the end of 2018 – the first signs of social media activity – and started to sample posts based on the deductive categories: awareness/advocacy, action/reaction and organisation/mobilisation. Occasionally, a post fell into more than one category; if this was the case, the frequency of all categories was included in the data collection by following my coding agenda shown in Table 1. Similarly, for the second phase of data collection, I again accessed posts at the end of 2018 – the first signs of social media activity – and started to sample posts based on the inductive categories (coding agenda: Table 2). Once a post reflecting one or more of the categories (overall aim of the movement, decentralised and centralised leadership) was identified, the post was scanned and evaluated if it adhered to the coding rules: inspiring and spreading awareness (overall aim of movement), clear emphasis of achieving goals together (decentralised leadership) and the strategic tagging usernames in posts (centralised leadership). If the post met the definition and adhered to the coding rules, a third analysis of the post was done, scanning for the codes and I recorded this data in Excel. Examples of posts that met the definitions, coding criteria and included codes are as follows: 1. A Facebook post signifying the overall aim of the network. The post meets the definition and coding rule (indicated in italics); the post has an educational nature and conveys a need for change, through inspiring and promoting events (indicated in bold). “Great news! Prestigious Oxford university is divesting all current and banning any future investments in fossil fuels. Student climate groups helped make this happen. Activism works!”

2. An Instagram post signifying centralised leadership. The post meets the definition and coding rule of centralised leadership (indicated in italics) through praising an individual and tagging a username (indicated in bold) to accredit success. “UN Champions of the Earth speech by @username Last Thursday the FridayForFuture movement was presented with the Champions of the Earth award by the UN. 15-year-old striker @username from the USA held a “non-acceptance” speech when it was presented. @username refused to accept the award on behalf of the FFF movement and instead offered that we hold it until the UN earns it. Until the UN uses

32 the power that they have to act, and ensure that the future generations will continue to live.” 3. A tweet signifying decentralised leadership (soft leadership and horizontalism) through reflecting the definition and coding rule of this category. The post does not tag usernames and encourages a sense of togetherness (indicated in italics). The codes of decentralised leadership are indicated in bold. “Fridays For Future has brought together millions of young people across the world. We are powerful because we are united. Here are some memories.”

The outcomes of the data collection were added to three individual Excel sheets, each platform has a separate sheet. During the data collection, only social media posts by Fridays For Future were collected: comments, likes and shares were excluded from the data collection; however, hashtags were recorded in an additional cell in Excel. In the case of Twitter, retweets by Fridays For Future are included in the collected dataset.

4.3 Data analysis Excel was used to record, store and analyse the collected data. According to Mayring (2000), using computer programs “within the framework of qualitative analysis to support (not to replace) text interpretation” has three purposes (p. 6). First, a computer program assists a researcher by offering tools to make the process of text analysis easier (Mayring, 2000). By using Excel, data was continuously accessible and could be added over the course of the research period. Second, programs such as Excel work as a mechanism to document and record “all steps of analysis” (Mayring, 2000, p. 6). All steps of the data documentation and analysis were recorded in the Excel file as stipulated in the data collection chapter above (4.2). Third, Excel “offers links to quantitative analysis (often already implemented within the program), e.g. to compare frequencies of categories” (Mayring, 2000, p. 6). Each platform (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) had its own Excel sheet during the sampling process with the following headers: code, frequency, category, observed trends, their respective genre and any unforeseen trends. Further, observed trends, hashtags, @usernames (tagging function) were added for additional analysis in the extensive set of the overall results. As described above, for this research Excel provides a tool to record qualitative concepts and conduct quantitative analysis. For the data analysis of the results, the codes were combined in their respective category and their frequencies were added up. This process was repeated on all sheets that contained data of

33 the individual platform results. Graphs depicting the combined platform-specific outcomes are presented in the next chapter. Additionally, as a last step of the analysis, the platform-specific data was combined. This means, the data from all three platforms (containing 200 posts each) was merged into one dataset of 600 posts in total. By creating graphs (shown in the next chapter) of the overall outcomes observed on social media, conclusions related to Vegh’s genres, forms of leadership, online behaviours and practices are discussed.

4.4 Ethical considerations and limitations of the approach Any process involving the research of online communities must take ethical considerations carefully into account (Pink et al., 2016). The study of digital networks requires ethical considerations to be implemented as these guide researchers to conduct honest and valid research (“Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity”, 2018). The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is dedicated to the promotion of intellectual honesty, protection of human subjects and prevention of misconduct; its guidelines are used in the design of this study. In particular, three ethical guidelines were applied throughout the research to adhere to the rules set by NWO (Dutch research council) and COPE (international ethics committee). First, no closed groups were joined for the purposes of this research. Only public social media pages (listed in 4.2) are included in the dataset to ensure that no private digital spaces are (mis)used for research purposes without informed consent. Second, no (user)names or personal information is included in the dataset other than publicly available information related to Greta Thunberg. No personal information is listed to ensure that members cannot be identified and their privacy is protected. Any images sourced from Fridays For Future pages that includes names in the caption of posts will be covered to protect the privacy of users. Third, the research is limited to the specific research questions outlined in section 4.1. Limitations were encountered throughout the research. First, the nature of this research rests on personal interpretation of qualitative concepts. The categories and codes that are recorded in the dataset have varying meanings to individuals, but this does not limit their relevance for this research. Categories were identified to reflect specific codes; however, future researchers may interpret applied categories and codes differently. Second, Fridays For Future is a global network thus members post content in a variety of languages. Two decisions were taken to address these potential challenges: a) as a fluent speaker of German, English and Dutch, I only included posts from these three languages and b) Google Translate – or any other form of translation software – was excluded due to their poor track records. Third, during the

34 data collection, a lack of content was identified on the Fridays For Future Instagram account. In June 2020 only a total of 156 posts were available on Instagram. To resolve this issue, the ‘tagged’ button was accessed and posts originating from validated country accounts of Fridays For Future were added to the dataset. No differentiation is made between the posts from the overall and country-specific accounts because they are all part of the movement. In the next chapter of this thesis, the results of the data collection and analysis will be presented.

Chapter 5 | Results This chapter presents the findings of the qualitative content analysis in the following three sections. First, the findings of the deductive category per genre are presented. In the second section, based on the inductive categories, the results of each platform are described. The third and last section shows the results of the combined dataset of 600 posts.

5.1 Results from deductive category application on each platform The first phase of data collection was done in order to gain a preliminary understanding of how online behaviours and practices correlate with Vegh’s three genres of digital activism. The initial categorisation of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts show that Fridays For Future’s online behaviours and practices reflect the three genres: awareness/advocacy, action/reaction and organisation/mobilisation. The results show that Facebook falls into all three genres, thus the audience uses the platform for a range of purposes related to increasing advocacy, reacting to world events and organising strikes and/or protests. Facebook is the only platform where elaborate information of events is added; therefore, it is the main social media platform that Fridays For Future uses for organisational purposes (in June 2020 it had 36,018 followers). Every post related to organisation/mobilisation on Instagram and Twitter redirects a user to the Facebook page. Instagram only falls into the genre of increasing awareness and advocacy (genre 1). Twitter also is part of this genre, but in addition is used for reactive means for example after world events (genre 2). Based on the individual and shared genres identified across these three platforms, the results show that social media is used for strategic purposes and Facebook is the heart of the movement’s offline events. By attracting people’s attention on Instagram and having a continuous flow of information on Twitter, to position the movement’s stance on climate change, the described practices of these two platforms can recruit potential members and retain interest of followers. Through this process Fridays For Future can build up the amount of information a (potential) follower is exposed to. If a user accesses Facebook, all

35 information is available, indicating a strong relationship. If Facebook is not accessed, a lightweight relationship is formed instead. When it comes to organisation, there is a two-step pattern to capture attention and provide details of planned events: 1) a post is created to raise advocacy (the accompanying image usually depicts a strike or march or numbers to contextualise a problem) and 2) Instagram and Twitter provide links to the Facebook event to offer access information and sign up details. As mentioned above, Instagram is the only platform that falls into one genre: awareness/advocacy (genre 1). However, during the first phase of data collection it was observed that Instagram creates a more personal narrative and link with followers – it appears as a storytelling platform. With 441,000 followers in June 2020, the Fridays For Future Instagram account has the most followers but least amount of posts on the profile. Instagram conveys specific stories and makes use of emotive language to instil hope rather than demand action or promotion of events. Twitter falls into the two genres of awareness/advocacy and action/reaction. Twitter has the least number of followers; in June 2020 the follower count was 1,014. With an average of 25 retweets per day, the continuous flow of information is fed on Twitter through sharing multiple tweets from verified members and sub-groups of Fridays For Future. The reactive genre and high frequency of retweets per day represents the practice of having a rapid-fire online conversation on Twitter. Below Table 3 shows which genres were identified on each platform.

Social media platforms Genre 1: Genre 2: Genre 3: awareness/advocacy action/reaction organisation/mobilisation Facebook (36,018 followers) X X X Instagram (441,000 followers) X Twitter (1,014 followers) X X

Table 3: Genres of digital activism identified on Fridays For Future’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Source: Author.

5.2 Results from inductive coding of each platform In this section, I will present the findings of the inductive coding of each platform. Then, the combined results of the dataset with 600 posts will be presented in the last section of this chapter.

36 5.2.1 Facebook The results of the dataset containing 200 posts sourced from Facebook reveal that every sampled post (100%) educates readers. In less than 50% of the posts, the theme of change is prevalent, but in more than 50% of the posts the theme is to inspire readers. These codes are part of the category ‘overall aim of the movement’ and, when added up, result in the highest coded frequency. The second highest category is decentralised leadership where the most frequently identified code is “we/us”, occurring in 144 (72%) of the sampled posts. This finding indicates that characteristics of soft leadership and horizontalism are more prevalent than the third category of centralised leadership, detected in only 64.5% of posts sampled on Facebook. Most notably, all events from Fridays For Future are posted on Facebook. Instagram and Twitter posts with information on events continuously link to the official Facebook page for full details. This online practice is identified throughout the analysis of the behaviours and use of Facebook by Fridays For Future. As Facebook is the only platform to offer an events tab, this affordance is brought to the attention of users across all three platforms. The events are not hidden in the private country-specific groups, therefore everyone is welcome to join the network. An example of the collective aim to organise offline action is shown below.

Figure 8: Events listed on the open Fridays For Future Facebook page. Affordance available on Facebook enables Fridays For Future to raise awareness about planned events. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/pg/FridaysForFuture.org/events, n.d.

37 The code “Thunberg” is identified in 18 posts (9%) whereas the code “leader” is not observed in any of the posts. Usernames are tagged in 111 (55.5%) of the sampled posts. Yet, the tagging of usernames is not exclusively applied to highlight leaders, but is utilised to accredit personal stories and initiatives with their authors. Even though these codes reflect the category of centralised leadership, the practice on Facebook shows that the affordance of tagging username credits local initiatives and, in some cases, contributes to increasing awareness about local sub-groups of Fridays For Future. The table below shows the frequency of each code sampled on Facebook in 200 posts.

Codes Frequency on Facebook Category Educate 200 Overall aim of movement Change 96 Overall aim of movement Inspire 102 Overall aim of movement You/r 24 Decentralised leadership Our 75 Decentralised leadership We/us 144 Decentralised leadership Thunberg 18 Centralised leadership Leader 0 Centralised leadership I (tagging usernames) 111 Centralised leadership

Table 4: Frequency of codes on Facebook. Source: Author.

The following graph (Figure 9) with the condensed code values of the above table and the frequency of each category gives an overview of the weight of the three categories. After combining the codes from the Facebook sampling, 398 codes reflect the overall aim of the network, 243 codes represent decentralised leadership and 129 to the category of centralised leadership. Even though the high frequency of tagging usernames reflects the category of centralised leadership, the category of decentralised leadership outweighs leadership by an additional 114 codes.

38

Figure 9: Facebook – summary of codes per category. Source: Author.

5.2.2 Instagram On Instagram the two categories overall aim of the movement and decentralised leadership reflect the same trend of precedence as on Facebook. Yet, the total frequency of these two categories on Instagram is with 516 and 286 much higher than those calculated on both Facebook (398 and 243) and Twitter (391 and 211). On Instagram, the overall aim of the movement and decentralised leadership have the highest frequencies of all three platforms. Instagram outperforms the other two because it is used as a storytelling platform to attract the attention of people. This entails creating more general posts in order to captivate user attention and increase awareness and advocacy. Every sourced post is educational and has a clear theme of change (100%). Every picture that is posted includes a caption sharing facts about climate change without stimulating an overflow of information. Compared to Facebook and Twitter, the difference between the categories of decentralised and centralised leadership is less on Instagram (difference between these two categories amounts to 61 codes). As Fridays For Future also employs Instagram as a tool to give praise, the codes amounting to a value of 225 of centralised leadership is observed through the tagging of usernames.

39 On Instagram Fridays for Future makes use of specific terminology that reflects centralised leadership very clearly, this is in contrast to Facebook and Twitter. The inclusion of the code “leader” was collected 48 times, amounting to 24% of Instagram posts positioning a leader. Even though the decentralised leadership code outperforms on Instagram, the specific use of the code “leader” is with a frequency of 48 also the highest among the three platforms. When leaders are positioned on Instagram, the online practices and terminology clearly place someone as part of a hierarchy. All individual code values and the combined total frequency of codes per category are presented below:

Codes Frequency on Instagram Category Educate 200 Overall aim of movement Change 200 Overall aim of movement Inspire 116 Overall aim of movement You/r 72 Decentralised leadership Our 110 Decentralised leadership We/us 104 Decentralised leadership Thunberg 9 Centralised leadership Leader 48 Centralised leadership I (tagging usernames) 168 Centralised leadership

Table 5: Frequency of codes on Instagram. Source: Author.

The next graph shows the frequency of each code sampled on Instagram in 200 posts. These coded posts have a total frequency of 516 for the overall aim of the movement, 286 for decentralised leadership and 225 for centralised leadership.

40

Figure 10: Instagram – summary of codes per category. Source: Author.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, centralised leadership is found in the behaviour of giving praise - reinforcing traditional leadership, where a person with significant power shares support publicly. On Facebook and Twitter, leadership is coded; but the findings reveal that the practice of tagging (indicating centralised leadership) is used to add value to the claims made in posts accrediting people and their work. Instagram is the only platform where centralised leadership does not adhere to this pattern. An example of the praise posts found on Instagram can be seen in the “striker of the day” or “sign of the week” posts that are published – on average – every second week. By giving praise to a sign, directly to a user through tagging him/her, a sense of friendly competition is initiated - who can outdo the other? This finding is very interesting and will be analysed in greater detail in the next chapter. Below, Figure 11 depicts the “sign of the week” post (the username in the screenshot is covered for privacy reasons).

41

Figure 11: Image on the Fridays For Future Instagram. ‘Sign of the week’ appraisal post adheres to the category centralised leadership. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/fridaysforfuture, n.d.

5.2.3 Twitter Throughout the data collection, based on the inductive codes and their application, the findings show that Twitter is used very differently to Facebook and Instagram. In comparison to the other platforms, Fridays For Future retweets more than posting directly on Twitter to feed the continuous flow of content. In many cases, the primary author on Twitter is therefore not Fridays For Future. On average, 25 posts are retweeted by Fridays For Future on a daily basis. On Twitter, 329 codes were sampled in the category of centralised leadership and 211 in decentralised leadership. Thus, Twitter is the only platform where the total codes of centralised leadership have a higher frequency than that of decentralised leadership. The findings from the coding of tweets reveal that there is a high focus on positioning key figures who are viewed as reliable sources of information. By tagging users 186 times (93%), this online behaviour and accompanying online practice offers an explanation about the high trend of observed codes indicating centralised leadership. With every tweet that is posted or retweeted by Fridays For Future, the overall aim of the movement (to educate, inspire and create change) is coded in a total frequency of 391. Further, Thunberg’s name was included in 123 out of the 200 posts (61.5%), which is the highest observed frequency across all three platforms. Through the tagging of Thunberg, her name is used as a symbol to add weight to stated problems. Moreover, as Thunberg is acknowledged as a leader and expert of climate change globally, the strategic inclusion of her

42 name (either through tagging or through the hashtag format) enables Fridays For Future to leverage her status and gain more attention. The table below presents the frequency of each code sampled on Twitter in 200 posts.

Codes Frequency on Twitter Category Educate 97 Overall aim of movement Change 156 Overall aim of movement Inspire 138 Overall aim of movement You/r 22 Decentralised leadership Our 11 Decentralised leadership We/us 178 Decentralised leadership Thunberg 123 Centralised leadership Leader 20 Centralised leadership I (tagging usernames) 186 Centralised leadership

Table 6: Frequency of codes on Twitter. Source: Author.

The next graph provides a visual overview of all combined codes in relation to their categories. As can be seen, Twitter has a total frequency of 391 for the overall aim of the movement, a total of 211 for decentralised leadership and a frequency of 329 indicating centralised leadership.

43

Figure 12: Twitter – summary of codes per category. Source: Author.

After comparing and contrasting the individual datasets of each platform, it is clear that Fridays For Future uses each of them for strategic purposes, thus reflecting the three genres that Vegh proposed (awareness/advocacy, action/reaction and organisation/mobilisation). Together with the findings of the inductive categories from the second phase of the research, I reach the following conclusions: 1. Facebook adheres to all three genres and offers Fridays For Future an online space to share detailed information about event planning and organisation; 2. Instagram is strictly used as a tool to increase awareness/advocacy through creating a clear storyline to convey a one-on-one focus, leading to an increase in centralised leadership by tagging usernames. It is also the only platform where the code “leader” is most often used; 3. On Twitter, the patterns of the observed practices reflect the genre of action/reaction more than increasing awareness/advocacy. Through the continuous retweeting of content, the codes of centralised leadership outrank those of decentralised leadership. Tagging usernames is coded 186 times.

44 5.3 Results after combining each dataset The significance of each set of results has been described. To understand the overall trends and the differences per platform and audiences and how leaderlessness is enacted by Fridays For Future, each dataset was combined. Below, Figure 13 shows how each category on all three platforms compares to the other. From this graph it is evident that sharing and promoting the overall aim of the movement outperforms across all three platforms.

Figure 13: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – summary of codes per category. Source: Author.

Combining all results of each category into a 600 dataset the following graph (Figure 14) shows that the overall aim of the network is coded 1,305 times, decentralised leadership much less with 740 times and centralised leadership even less with 683 times across all three platforms.

45

Figure 14: Summary of codes per category across all three platforms. Source: Author.

This chapter has gone into details about the results, explaining the online behaviours and practices identified across the three platforms. The next chaper will discuss the significance and broader meanings of the collected results.

Chapter 6 | Analysis of results and a discussion of their significance This chapter analyses the findings that were aggregated during the qualitative content analysis of Fridays For Future’s social media pages on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I will first apply Vegh’s three genres of digital activism to create a model and explore broader practices identified on the three social media platforms. This model (Figure 15) will help in understanding the broader practices of digital activists and identification of sub-cultures and trends, specifically on Instagram. Moreover, the first section will highlight the differences per platform and per audience. I will also illustrate the discrepancies between decentralised leadership and the results of coding centralised leadership, by integrating Rao’s soft leadership and Gerbaudo’s horizontal ideology, to discuss the practice of tagging usernames in more

46 detail. Lastly, I explore the positioning of Thunberg as the figurehead of 21st century climate activism to explain what leaderlessness entails in the Fridays For Future movement.

6.1 Genres of digital activism on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter From a research perspective, social media platforms offer an abundance of opportunities. Platforms and their affordances inform users how to navigate their online behaviours and practices to mediate a person’s experience. In this section, I will discuss how Fridays For Future seemingly structure their method of spreading messages to members based on the deductive category application of awareness/advocacy, action/reaction and organisation/mobilisation. The first step of this analysis is to demonstrate the deductive category application of Vegh’s genres to categorise social media platform use and purposes when researching a digital activist group. Not only do these genres explain how networked movements use social media, but they also offer a framework to deduce initial patterns from posted content. Please refer to Figure 15 below, which presents an overview of Vegh’s genres and their link to Fridays For Future’s social media use.

47 Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are Vegh’s genres: awareness/advocacy How does Fridays chosen to deductively apply genres to (inspire, educate and organise action), For Future use understand how each platform serves a action/reaction (rapid-fire communication) specific purpose through the online social media and organisation/mobilisation (offline platforms? behaviours and practices of Fridays For action) Future

Facebook affordance of offering an events tab helps in spreading information about upcoming strikes. The platform does not constrict length of posts through word count

Frames offline action and Genre: organisation e.g. strikes organisation/mobilisation and protests

Instagram’s overall design supports sharing stories. The platform creates ties by using emotive icons in affordance design

Aim is to inspire, educate Genre: and organise planned awareness/advocacy events by linking to page information on Facebook

Twitter’s character limit results in multiple tweets that create live and continuous communication to produce various narratives

Rapid-fire communication in response to events Genre: action/reaction positions Twitter as a platform to actively react to events

Figure 15: Deductive category application of Vegh’s genres to categorise social media platform use and purposes. Source: Author.

48 The genres reveal that the social media platforms reflect the logic of connective, networked (online) action (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Vegh, 2003). When integrating the genres of digital activism, Facebook is categorised to reflect all three earlier mentioned genres. It is the only platform where the design facilitates organisation and mobilisation, since it includes a separate events section to spread this information. As Facebook’s affordances allow for a range of content to be posted, to be spread and therefore to be communicated this platform falls into all three genres that mediate a range of online experiences and practices. Out of the three chosen platforms, Facebook has the least amount of constraints in its design; it is a space where content can be spread with few hindrances, such as no character limit, and enables users to fast forward when watching videos. Thus, the design of the platform supports digitally overcoming the hindrances of a movement that is globally dispersed. Instagram serves as a storytelling platform, focusing on creating personal one-on-one connections with followers of Fridays For Future. As the posts on Instagram aim to attract audience attention on a global scale, the content posted is constructed of broader as well as specific information to raise awareness and increase advocacy. This combination produces storylines that are not overly specific for a broader audience and, at the same time, appeals to online sub-cultures that are focused on living an eco-friendly and zero plastic life, for example. On Instagram, the aim is to capture and retain audience attention by having posts that encourage users to spread and share knowledge stemming from Fridays For Future; this identified trend offers an explanation why Instagram has the highest number of followers among the three platforms. The design of Instagram therefore mirrors the genre of increasing awareness and advocating against climate change. The symbol – a heart icon for a ‘like’ – creates an emotional link to the accounts followed. The hashtags on Instagram link to an archive of sub-cultures that glorify alternative lifestyles. Broadly speaking, digital climate activism and embracing an eco- friendly lifestyle are easier to convey through the posting of images and inclusion of hashtags, yet they do not guarantee impact (Morozov, 2009). On Instagram, hashtags offer a mechanism to search for alternate ways of living an eco-friendly lifestyle; yet, these Instagram users are observed to prefer posting trendy images that visually imply supporting conscious lifestyles (as depicted in the following Figure 15). But, from an analytical perspective, the act of posting an image and including hashtags to convey being part of a movement reflects the concerns of Morozov. His theory states that “slacktivism” produces lightweight relationships, in this case, through only posting images, as these users are predicted to be less likely to actively participate in collective actions (Morozov, 2009). The glorifying of climate activism on Instagram creates

49 ecosytes that transform cultural norms and social beliefs into digital practices, but do not guarantee impact and change and, in the context of this study, generate mostly an archive of trendy images on Instagram (Nierborg & Poell, 2018).

Figure 15: Images from Instagram. Posts linked to Fridays For Future that seemingly support eco-friendly lifestyles through the posting of visually intriguing images. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com, n.d.

The conversational style, that the platform of Twitter integrates into its design and functionality, characterises the reactive and active practices from Vegh’s genres. The tweets and hashtags show that the majority of posts focus on promoting and reporting during an event.

50 These online practices create a digital narrative on the Twitter account of Fridays For Future. By having a constant stream of information and narratives, members of the movement can provide on-the-go and live updates about events (Poell, 2019). Multiple tweets that add up to a collection of thoughts is a frequently observed trend but exclusively detected on Twitter. Based on the design of Twitter, users can digitally experience events by monitoring the platform and reading flows of narratives. Thus, the stream of Twitter updates produces a digital way of experiencing events. By structuring the social media platforms and their respective uses according to genres, the activities of Fridays For Future form an efficient way of spreading its messages to appropriate audiences.

6.2 Coding to understand leadership, the overall aim of the network and the significance of a participatory culture It is wrong to assume that social media platforms and other forms of digital technology eliminate centralised leadership (Gerbaudo, 2017). As the results indicate, even in a movement that positions itself as leaderless and around the purely symbolic representation of an individual, there are variations across the platforms that concur and also indicate the contrary of this finding. The category of decentralised leadership varies across each platform and most surprisingly was outperformed by centralised leadership codes on Twitter. Linking back to Gerbaudo, I want to discuss the variation in the inductive results by exploring forms of leadership and understand their broader significance. Leadership is a complex and evolving concept. It has numerous definitions that are dependent on social, political, economic and cultural factors as these influence perception and interpretation of the concept of leadership. There are variations in how decentralised and centralised leadership are represented in the study. With a total of 286 codes on Instagram, the storytelling platform encompasses a horizontal and ‘soft’ approach to sharing tasks amongst members of the movement. However, in order to be able to post on the account of Instagram, login details are required. This in itself creates barriers within Fridays For Future since login information must be shared, but also guarded as it provides reach and accessibility to many of the members of the movement. Fridays For Future has the most followers on Instagram but the least amounts of posts there. This trend is indicative of safeguarding access to a profile which is globally dispersed and has the largest follower base of the movement. Integrating Rao’s concept of soft leadership, where tasks are distributed in relation to the skill-set of people, could produce a new form of leadership because inadvertently some tasks will be considered

51 more elite than others. However, currently digital activist are limited to ‘soft’ forms of leadership to be able to take on a leaderless and networked organisation. Following Rao’s points would indicate that - despite this safeguarded and elite perception of certain tasks - one is able to ascertain the responsibility of being granted superiority, through a horizontal and ‘soft’ approach of task sharing. Thus, even though there arguably are more skilled and less skilled individuals, soft leadership gives all members of a group the opportunity to develop and strengthen their abilities to contribute to different tasks and at a level they are able to do. In contrast to what was expected to be found on Twitter, there is a significant number of codes that link to the category of centralised leadership; it was coded in a higher frequency than decentralised leadership. On Facebook 129 codes fell into the category of centralised leadership, on Instagram 225 and on Twitter 329 codes (200 more than on Facebook and 104 more than on Instagram). Quite surprisingly, when closely evaluating the online practices of Fridays For Future on Twitter, an unforeseen limitation of coding becomes clear. Horizontal and ‘soft’ forms of leadership place emphasis on task distribution; this process offers equal opportunities to members of a group by evaluating their capabilities. Fridays For Future seemingly attributes individual Twitter usernames by highlighting their efforts and therefore credits individuals with their work. Based on the created coding agenda, the tagging of usernames reflects the category of centralised leadership and excludes markers that reflect soft leadership. In order to evaluate my earlier decision, I refer back to the ideology of horizontalism, specifically the idea of “reluctant leaders” (Gerbaudo, 2012, p. 13). The term suggests that the tagged users are hesitant to be positioned in this prominent role, but at the same time, “reluctant leaders” amplify the achievements of networked organisation - sparked by their success in carrying out tasks. Therefore, the practice of tagging usernames as code to reflect the category of centralised leadership should be adjusted for future research. Tagging usernames in a digital activist setting serves a dual purpose (coding for both decentralised and centralised leadership) and thus needs to be broken down into further sub-categories to create more valid differentiations in future research. On all three platforms, the category reflecting the overall aim of the movement occurred in approximately 40% additional codes compared to decentralised and centralised leadership. If the overall aim of the movement is to depart from the lineage of centralised leadership, I suggest that this category best reflects the hybrid form that Fridays For Future is operating within. The overall aim of the movement portrays the decentralised and ‘soft’ leadership forms through the observed practices and genres of each platform and audience. Therefore, the

52 category overall aim of the movement is more indicative of horizontalism and soft leadership than measuring different forms of leadership. The overall aim of the movement was categorised by the following themes to form codes: educate, change and inspire. Each of these coded themes are discussed to show how the overall aim of the movement best represents the current leaderless structure that I observed on Fridays For Future’s social media platforms throughout my research. The aim of the movement presents the broad aspirations of Fridays For Future; the behaviours and practices, that were found and discussed so far, fall under this category. The coded theme to ‘educate’ shows the desire to produce content and share knowledge with followers of the movement. The code of education requires a range of content to be created and shared with members of the movement and people who are not part of it, indicative of the practices described on Instagram – a mix of specific and broad information to attract a range of audiences. The coded theme of ‘change’ describes collective actions and the networked organisation of protests/strikes to be coordinated, whilst inferring that more must be done to improve the climate. ‘Change’ can be a theme to organise networked action but also a link to ‘inspire’, bridging it to this last code. How exactly Fridays For Future inspires people is complex and rests on a variation of tactics that have not been included in this study. However, based on the knowledge generated so far, I can deduce that people’s interests must be targeted through playing on common interests to inspire them. But to inspire individuals is difficult, particularly as the Fridays For Future movement is active in over 80 countries that are broken down into local initiatives. However, what ties all these categories, behaviours, practices and networked organisation and mobilisation together is the need for the Fridays For Future to assume a role to participate in the spreading of the mission and messages to contribute to the overall success of the movement. Without a networked participatory culture representing the aim of the movement, it would not be as successful as it is today. What has just been described is the distribution of the tasks and the codes that best explain the hybrid, networked organisation I suggested at the beginning of this thesis. Based on the discussion of the results, the analysis supports the claim that Fridays For Future places less emphasis on leadership forms but values horizontal, ‘soft’ leadership and positions Thunberg as the figurehead, not as the leader. Summing up, is it vital to emphasise that technologies are a facilitator of social transformation (Gerbaudo, 2017). This is clear in the varying practices that have been discussed through the lens of a cyberpopulist online culture, horizontal forms of leadership that distribute tasks based on merits and therefore produce active participation that is fuelled by the

53 movement. Despite indicators of horizontal and ‘soft’ leadership forms being prevalent, my analysis of codes and their link to online behaviours and practices indicates that more research is needed to understand the link between Fridays For Future’s internal and external positioning of leadership. The research does not provide personal views from Fridays For Future members because the data collection was based on observing the movement through a qualitative content analysis. To gain a more detailed understanding of the internal organisation of the movement, researchers should seize future opportunities where interviews are conducted with verified members of Fridays For Future. By designing future research opportunities around interaction with the Fridays For Future members, more insights can be generated to explain how the networked organisation aims to reflect leaderlessness externally.

Chapter 7 | Conclusion Throughout this thesis, I have been motivated to uncover contemporary leadership by researching how Fridays For Future operates as a hybrid, leaderless activist group. In my efforts to understand this suggested form of organisation of digital activism, I sought to answer how leaderlessness is enacted by Fridays For Future through conducting a qualitative content analysis, sourcing 200 post each from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to reveal differences per platform and per audience. The most significant finding of my study shows that despite the affordance of tagging usernames being coded to reflect centralised leadership, in practice and upon closer analysis Fridays For Future apply soft leadership forms. Thus, this coded online practice in fact supports decentralised leadership, specifically as it reflects horizontal and ‘soft’ forms of leadership through the sharing of tasks. Additionally, the findings indicate that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter serve specific purposes that help to raise awareness and advocacy, organise and mobilise (offline) action and aid in acting and reacting to world events, as predicted by the first hypothesis. Further, in the second phase of the research, it became clear that Facebook’s affordances mirror the platform’s aim to connect people throughout the world, due to the variation in the platforms’ affordances and the limited amount of constraints. Both Instagram and Twitter are found to serve specific and key purposes of the movement: creating one-on-one connections through making use of Instagram’s personal format and storytelling design, and enabling users dispersed throughout the world to experience events through the continuous flow of content on Twitter (Nieborg &

54 Poell, 2018). These two findings show how platforms offer their users tools to digitally connect members of this movement. After combining each dataset to produce an overview of the 600 coded posts, I paid closer attention to the broader meanings of the total amount (2,728) of all codes aggregated during the research. What I found after combining the codes is the overall aim of the network (codes: “educate”, “change” and “inspire”) represents the will and mission of Fridays For Future, reflected by the suggested cyberpopulist environment and mindset to allow for a horizontal distribution of leadership roles through the sharing of tasks. The extent to which soft leadership is practiced by Fridays For Future requires more detailed research, especially research in the interaction with members of the movement who are actively participating in the collective, broad goal of the group through their skill set. The first research question “How is decentralised leadership enacted by the Fridays For Future movement?” helped in setting the scene for the research. To answer this question, (cyber)populism is used as a lens to identify additional ideologies and concepts. The observed behaviours were positioned as categories to investigate the role between leadership forms and the significance of a participatory culture to project the overall aim of the network by educating, inspiring and changing the perception around climate change. After the contemporary online environment was described, the second research question prompted the following line of inquiry: “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?” Throughout the methodology and results chapters (4 and 5) of this thesis, the practice of tagging usernames was coded to reflect centralised leadership; however, as I suggest in the previous chapter, these practices are markers of soft leadership. Posts initially evaluated as positioning individual members of the network in a hierarchy encompassing centralised leadership forms are therefore viewed as practices of soft leadership. More precisely, they are viewed as an outcome of sharing tasks in a horizontal form of distributing tasks amongst members of the movement. By using a figurehead in the posts on social media, more global attention is gained, especially when tagging Thunberg’s name. Fridays For Future represents a complex but well-coordinated and organised digital climate activist network. Despite social media platforms’ affordances guiding user experiences, the network remains a collective identity regardless of being globally dispersed. As the practice of (digital) activism grows and spreads throughout the world, it depends on

55 numerous elements to ensure its success. Digital activism and Fridays For Future remain fascinating phenomena which provide countless research opportunities in the future as the movement and its impact continues to grow.

56 Chapter 8 | Bibliography

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