Climate change or what? Prognostic framing by Fridays for Future protesters

Abstract

Since August 2018, Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future have captured the attention of the world by mobilizing millions of young students as well as adults to join their climate strikes. The movement has stressed the urgency of global warming and urged politicians to listen to science and take action. The collective action framing has thus been broad and inclusive, but correspondingly vague in terms of its demands. It is therefore pertinent to explore what climate strikers believe should be done to address climate change. By analysing responses to an open survey question posed to participants in the climate strikes in March and September 2019 from Stockholm, Malmö, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Florence and Brussels, this article uses a mixed-methods approach to investigate prognostic framing in the European climate movement. Distinguishing between two dimensions of projected change—its character and its main agents—this study re-conceptualizes the common distinction between institutionalist and anti-institutionalist approaches as a split between top-down and bottom-up as well as the system change and system development types of prognostic framing. While top-down change within the current system is identified as the most common prognostic frame, considerable numbers of survey respondents instead stress individual lifestyle changes. A bottom-up change of the system to address global warming is somewhat surprisingly more likely to be articulated by middle-aged respondents than by youths. The latter frame also receives disproportionate support from the most left-leaning participants, which demonstrates the continued relevance of the left–right dimension in green politics.