Climate Crisis and Social Media Activism in FridaysForFuture-Rome

The paper addresses digital climate activism from the experience of FridaysForFuture-Rome activists. We analyze their perceptions, attitudes, and actions regarding the climate crisis and how their positioning translates into social media usages. The theoretical framework connects social representations theory, and its applications to environmental issues, with ecological and praxeological studies on digital activism. The methodological design highlights limits and opportunities of a multimethod qualitative research carried out with a transformative epistemic posture. The analysis shows how FridaysForFuture activists perceive climate change as a systemic socio-ecological crisis with long-standing cause and effects and which affects every area of human life, according to an intersectional conception that bridges the struggles for climate and social justice. Social media are experienced as constitutive environments of activism, in which political and media practices define each other, shaping the movement’s identification strategies. These results account for a political appropriation of both climate change and the use of social media. The perception of the former as a shared, overarching problem takes shape along the connective actions that occur with/in the latter, respecting or challenging user practices and platform mechanisms.