Blog 1: The ‘Greta Effect’ — The Rise in Youth Environmental Activism
This is a blog documenting Greta Thunberg and her online influence on environmental activism, for my social networking and digital media unit at university. I will be analysing, evaluating and discussing the impact she has had on social media and global climate concerns as well as conducting quantitative research on her social media presence. I will also be bringing in and discussing theories based around her influence and social media use and how they link to both her and each other. I will present this blog using Medium. I feel this is a very user-friendly site with some good features to present my work and findings. It also looks very presentable and professional, making it a good hosting platform.
Background
Greta Thunberg is a 17-year-old environmental activist from Stockholm, Sweden (BBC, 2020). She first began campaigning with school strikes in 2018 at just 15 years old. This began with Thunberg missing three weeks of school to sit outside the Swedish parliament to protest for action to be taken against the climate crisis. She began doing this alone and gradually gained more and more support with others joining her. She decided to return to school after 3 weeks, however continued to miss school on Fridays thus the movement becoming ‘Fridays for Future’. These strikes inspired thousands of school goers to do the same around the world, in such countries as the United Kingdom, United States, Belgium, France and so on. This influence becoming known as ‘The Greta Effect’. (Fridays For Future, 2020)
‘School Strike for Climate’
Greta first heard about climate change after learning about it in school at the age of 8 and could not understand why it was not being discussed more openly and taken more seriously.
“But. No one ever talked about it. Ever.” (Thunberg, 2019)
In 2019 Thunberg was names Time’s Person of the Year for her action against climate change (Time, 2019). In just 18 months she went from skipping school alone to addressing world leaders including the President of the United States, the pope and the heads of state at the U.N. At just 17 years old at this time this is a monumental movement for people of her generation.
As well as her huge global impact on the climate crisis, Thunberg also lives with Asperger’s syndrome (ADS). This is a disorder whereby individuals have difficulty with their social and communication skills with others. They can also have interests in a particular subject or topic and their focus tends to remain deeply on this interest (AutismSociety, 2020). This is the environment and climate crisis for Greta. She has always been open about having Asperger’s and from this she has raised huge awareness of ASD, Thunberg speaks of the hindrances this has had on her but inspiring those with the disorder to own their differences, she describes this as her ‘superpower’ (Thunberg, 2019).
What Makes Her A Key Influencer?
To justify my choice of key influencer I first must define what a key influencer is. An influencer can be described as ‘someone (or something) with the power to affect the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original content to social media platform’ (Wired, 2019). This can often be within the realm of branding and marketing, these individuals post sponsored content to promote a brand. However, they can also be an influencer of social, economic or political change by way of inspiring others to follow certain values based on the influencer’s knowledge on a specific subject, thus making Greta Thunberg fits the definition of an influencer. She has helped to inspire a generation about a crisis that needs to be recognised, she uses her platforms (Twitter, Instagram etc) in a way that speaks to the younger generation, people much less likely to pick up a newspaper or watch the news. Posting her school strike photos on these social media sites sparked interest amongst people who had not previously been interested (Jung et al., 2020). Her Twitter following reached 4.4 million and her Instagram following reached 10.6 million in 2020 (TrackAnalytics, 2020). These statistics show that sharing her knowledge of a specific subject, in this case climate change, has a huge impact on users of these sites.
Thunberg has also had a huge impact within pop culture, hugely furthering her messages. Through the likes of bands and DJs her message has been made even more public and spread even further. For example, she wrote an essay which she read aloud in the opening song to The 1975s 2019 album ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’. This was also used as a fundraiser that the band is supporting ‘#TeamTrees’ where for every $1 donation a tree is planted. They raised over $20 Million.
I have chosen Greta Thunberg as my key influencer for a number of reasons; her determination and commitment to fight for a cause that needs addressing at such a young age is extremely impressive to me, the confidence to stand up for what she believes in and the ability to inspire others to do so and target world leaders as well as this. I first heard of Thunberg about a year ago and found what she was doing very inspiring and even more important, since then I can note many environmental behaviours of my own that I have changed due to this. Not only is she an influencer to millions of people but me included, making her a suitable choice for this piece of work.
Within this series of blog posts I will be conducting research on Thunberg’s twitter use and content while bringing in relevant theory from the likes of Ervin Goffman and Jürgen Habermas. For this I will be focusing on Thunberg’s use of twitter to address her engagement with her audience and those who disagree with her movement. For my research I used a sample of her tweets from a seven-day period from 10/12/2020 to 17/12/2020, analysing the tweet content and the number of likes/retweets/responses from the most popular of those.
References:
- Autism Society (2014) Asperger’s Syndrome. [Online] Available at: https://www.autism-society.org/what-is/aspergers-syndrome/ [Accessed on 18 November 2020]
- BBC News (2020) Greta Thunberg: Who is she and what does she want? BBC News. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49918719 [Accessed 15 November 2020]
- Fridays For Future (2020) Fridays For Future. [Online] Available at: https://fridaysforfuture.org/ [Accessed on 19 November 2020]
- Jung, J., Petkanic, P., Nan, D. and Kim, J. H. (2020) “When a Girl Awakened the World: A User and Social Message Analysis of Greta Thunberg.” Sustainability, 12(7) p. 2707.
- Martineau, P. (2019) What’s an Influencer? The Complete WIRED Guide. WIRED. [Online] Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-an-influencer/ [Accessed on 19 November 2020]
- Time. (2019). Greta Thunberg Is TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year. [online] Available at: https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/ [Accessed 19 November 2020].
- The 1975 (2019) “The 1975 — The 1975.” YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcfzAfuFyE [Accessed on 27 November 2020]
- Thunberg, G. (2019) No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference. Penguin Books.
- Trackalytics (2018) Greta Thunberg | Twitter Statistics [Online] Available at: https://www.trackalytics.com/twitter/profile/gretathunberg/ [Accessed on 19 November 2020]
