Social Media and the Global Climate Strike: A tool for youth climate change activists and politicians

Abstract

The Global Climate Strike has brought youth climate change activism to the forefront of social issues in Canada. Recent scholarship has established the prominence and success of Canadian youth as climate change activists (Tupper 2014). Much of this success can be attributed to the youth’s adoption of social media as an effective tool for mobilizing support on a national and global scale (Arnold et al., 2009). This paper analyzes youth climate change activists’ use of social media as a tool for the global climate strike movement in Canada. This analysis will employ the Resource mobilization and Political process theories as frameworks to analyze the social media framing techniques employed by Global Climate Strike organizers and politicians, respectively. The applicability of these theories in relation to social media and the Global Climate Strike will then be evaluated using the four stage approach to social movement theory.