Open Access“CLIMATE JUSTICE IS RACIAL JUSTICE”: THE YOUTH CLIMATE MOVEMENT AND INTERSECTIONAL MEDIA ORGANIZING IN AN ALGORITHMIC SOCIETY
Author(s) -
Ashley Lee
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.11968
Subject(s) - social movement , social media , climate justice , power (physics) , sociology , political science , youth studies , digital media , economic justice , politics , gender studies , media studies , climate change , law , ecology , physics , quantum mechanics , biology
Before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the world saw unprecedentedlevels of youth mobilization. From Black Lives Matter to March for Our Lives to the YouthClimate Strikes, the past decade saw young people leveraging social media to build movementsaround the world. Existing studies have shown how young people use social media to buildmovements in liberal democracies under the conditions of free assembly and association.However, since the global pandemic hit, young people (and others) have had to face variousconstraints to street mobilization. During the pandemic, as youth movements come to dependheavily on digital tools for organizing, social media platforms and algorithms may furthercomplicate the process by which young people’s exercise political power. Using the broaderyouth climate movement as a case study, I examine how youth movements shift their tactics inresponse to the pandemic, and what the implications of shifting to the digital space are forthe youth climate movement. This study draws on in-depth interviews with youth climateactivists, along with digital ethnography and surveys, conducted between 2019 and 2021.Findings show that young climate organizers galvanized social media to shift to remote andhybrid organizing tactics. At the same time, inequalities introduced by social mediaplatforms and algorithms became more acute for the youth movement.