Media Representation of Youth Movements Facing Climate Change. Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion in Spanish Press of Reference

Abstract

This article analyzes the media representation of youth movements that fight against climate change, taking as a reference their main organizations: Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion. Methodology is based on a content analysis of 262 news pieces published during the peak period of the 2019 mobilizations in four Spanish online newspapers of reference: El País, Eldiario.es, ABC and La Vanguardia. The results show that the self-described progressive media offer a more favorable attitude towards the mobilizations, especially when addressing Fridays for Future, while the conservative ones move between a position of neutrality and opposition, less benevolent in the case of Extinction Rebellion. Although the newspapers offer a contextualized view, supported by the activists’ accounts, the representation of the protests tends to be somewhat sensationalist and more focused on the conflict than on its political agenda: in the case of Fridays for Future, they tend to an exotic personalization it in the figure of Greta Thunberg, whose proposals are rarely announced, while in the case of Extinction Rebellion some of their non-violent actions and performances are portrayed in an anecdotal way.