An international team of researchers has recently concluded a new report on the participants of the Fridays For Future (FFF) climate protests which suggests that the movement is becoming more established. A member of the team, senior researcher Katrin Uba from the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at UT, will discuss the results of the latest report on Wednesday, 18 March at 16:15 at the Faculty of Social Sciences building (Lossi 36, room 214).
In September 2019, the third Global Climate Strike organized by the Fridays For Future (FFF) mobilized 6,000 protest events in 185 countries and brought 7.6 million participants out onto the streets. The presentation “Protest for a future: Composition, mobilization and motives of the participants in Fridays For Future climate protests“ will describe the results of an internationally coordinated report based on survey data collected from a representative sample of protest participants from 19 cities around the world and compares it to data from a similar previous survey conducted in 13 European cities in March 2019.
Katrin Uba explains some of the main findings concerning the composition and motivation of the protesters: “First, while the climate strikes are often described as youth actions, prior to the September protests there were explicit calls for adults to join the movement. Our results show that the proportion of adult protestors did indeed increase between March and September. Second, because a lower proportion of September protesters say that their participation is directly motivated by Greta Thunberg, we conclude that the “Greta effect” is becoming less influential.”
The team also analysed the socioeconomic characteristics of the climate protesters as well as their motivation for taking part in the FFF events. They conclude that the findings suggest that the movement is becoming more established, although there are still large proportions of young participants who had not taken any political action before the strike in September.
There is a large international team of 40 scholars behind the surveys of FFF participants, while the editors of the presented report are Joost de Moor (Stockholm University), Katrin Uba (University of Tartu/ Uppsala University), Matthias Wahlström (University of Gothenburg), Magnus Wennerhag (Södertörn University) and Michiel de Vydt (University of Antwerp). The Swedish team is funded by FORMAS, A Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.
You can access the full version of the report at the website: https://osf.io/asruw/
For more information, please contact Dr Katrin Uba, katrin.uba [ät] ut.ee.