Protest for a future: Composition, mobilization and motives of the participants in Fridays For Future climate protests on 15 March, 2019 in 13 European cities

Abstract

The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in March 2019. Through a school strike, a new generation has been galvanized, representing a historical turn in climate activism. This wave of climate protest mobilization is unique in its tactics, global scope and appeal to teenage school students. Media coverage of these protests and high-level national and international political meetings involving the movement’s icon, Greta Thunberg, illustrate a level of global attention that no previous youth movement has ever received. A team of social scientists from universities across Europe1 organized a survey of the global FFF strike events on March 15. The team surveyed protesters in 13 cities in nine European countries using the same research design to collect data, following the well-established protest survey methodology used previously in the “Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation” (CCC) project.