Fridays For Future: Using Social Media in the Mobilization of a Global Social Movement

Abstract

This master’s thesis in International Education and Development contributes to the understanding of how social movements can mobilize globally through digital advocacy. Specifically, it focuses on the youth-led climate justice movement Fridays for Future (FFF). This is done by examining the research question: How has the Fridays for Future-movement used social media to mobilize on a global scale? By observing and collecting public digital content from social media accounts who represent the movement, I have examined the movement’s use of social media to spread awareness of the cause, promote their strikes and protests, and build community on a global scale. Further, the thesis used the same methods to look closer at three national FFF-groups, namely FFF Colombia, Afghanistan, and Norway. This showed how the global movement is impacted by local circumstances, and vice versa, bringing me to present a ‘glocal’ understanding of the mobilization of global social movements. Last, the theories of Castells (2009; 2015), Morozov (2012), and Gaventa (2006; Gaventa and Martorano, 2016), are used to examine the power structures limiting and/or enabling FFF’s global mobilization through social media, focusing on inequalities in access and representation, censorship and surveillance by governments and commercial actors, the role of mass-media, and the movement’s own ability to mobilize resources. The research shows that while social media can be a highly effective tool for social movement mobilization, there are problematic aspects of this which one should be conscious of.