The framing of environmental citizenship and youth participation in the Fridays for Future Movement in Finland

Abstract

The Fridays for Future (FFF) movement is a major climate movement on a global scale, calling for systemic change and demanding politicians act on their responsibilities. In this paper, we present and analyze original findings from a case study on the FFF movement in Finland, at a watershed moment for young climate activism. We explore the representations of young people’s environmental citizenship within the framings of the FFF movement, using an environ-mental citizenship framework analysis of the Finnish news media and Twitter discussions. We identified three frames within the media debate on the school strikes: the sustainable lifestyle frame, which focuses on the individual aspects of environmental citizenship, the active youth frame, which focuses on justifications of youth participation in politics, and the school attendance frame, which is concerned about the young people’s strike action. Our results explore the many aspects of environmental citizenship that young people express in the FFF movement. We reflect on the dominance of adult voices in the framing of this historic movement of young people for action on climate change. Our analysis contributes to a step change in the study of this important global movement, which is shaping the emergence of young people as active citizens in Finland and around the world. We argue that the FFF movement is shaping young people’s perceptions of active citizenship, and we advocate a youth-centred focus on the collective action and justice demands of young people.