The Advocacy Trap: the case of youth ecologist activism in Catalunya
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/Ambitos.2022.i55.04Keywords:
activism, youth, ecologism, advocacy, frustrationAbstract
The environmental youth movements have taken a different drift in recent years, especially after the emergence of the young activist Greta Thunberg. The coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent crisis, together with the phenomenon of digitization, are contributing to the formation of a new trend within activism, which many have defined as new social movements, NMS (von Kardorff, 2019). This new type of activism (and also other social movements) runs up against a challenge that is known as the advocacy trap, which is the situation where young environmental activists run into feelings of frustration, disappointment or despair at their inability to move from directly shape their demands to institutions that either do not take their demands seriously or use them for purposes other than those claimed by activists. The trap can result in reactions such as the abandonment of activism by young people or the exhaustion of movements. This article has three ambitions. First, outline the main keys to this new environmental youth activism. Second, present the main challenge you are facing right now, which this article has described as the advocacy trap. Third, empirically demonstrate from a set of semi- structured interviews the effects of this advocacy trap on environmental youth activism, focusing on the main consequences it has on the emotional state of its members.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Adam, S., y Kriesi, H. (2007). El enfoque de redes. En P. A. Sabatier (Ed.) Teorías del proceso de las políticas públicas, (pp. 139–348).
Demaria, F., Schneider, F., Sekulova, F., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2013). What is degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement. Environmental Values, 22(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327113x13581561725194
Della Porta, D., & Diani, M. (Eds.) (2015). The Oxford handbook of social movements. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199678402.001.0001
Díaz Pérez, S., Soler-i-Martí, R., & Ferrer Fons, M. (2021). Del mito global a la movilización local: Creación y resonancia del marco Greta Thunberg. Comunicar, 29(68), 35–45. https://doi.org/10.3916/c68-2021-03
Díaz Pérez, S. (2020). El futuro en llamas: Greta Thunberg y Fridays for Future. Beers and Politics. https://bit.ly/3oRxymt
Fernández-Reyes, R. (2021). La comunicación de la crisis climática en tiempos de crisis sanitaria. En D. Rodrigo-Cano, R. Mancinas-Chávez, y R. Fernández-Reyes (Eds.), La comunicación del cambio climático, una herramienta ante el gran desafío (pp. 124–164). Dykinson. https://bit.ly/3EQcQJo
Fisher, D.R. (2019). The broader importance of #FridaysForFuture. Nature Climate Change, 9, 430–431. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0484-y
Flynn, C., Yamasumi, E., Fischer, S., Snow, D., Grant, Z., y Kirby, M. (2021). Peoples’ Climate Vote. UNDP y Universidad de Oxford. https://bit.ly/3s4LbAR
Fridays for Future (n.d.). Strike statistics. Fridays for Future. Consultado el 9 de diciembre de 2021: https://bit.ly/3dwzrif
Hernández Ballesteros, M. L. (2020). Movilizaciones ecologistas juveniles y desarrollo alternativo. Estudio de caso: Fridays For Future Madrid (2019-2020). [Trabajo de Final de Máster]. Universidad Pontificia de Comillas.https://bit.ly/320x1WK
Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., y Zimmerman, A. (2018). By any media necessary: The new youth activism. European Journal of Communication, 34(5), 571–571. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323119876117a
Juris, J., Pereira, I., y Feixa, C. (2012). La globalización alternativa y los ‘novísimos’ movimientos sociales. Revista del Centro de Investigación de la Universidad la Salle, 10(37), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.26457/recein.v10i37.107
von Kardorff, E. (2019). Castells (1996): The Rise of the Network Society. En Holzer B., Stegbauer C. (Eds.) Schlüsselwerke der Netzwerkforschung (pp. 105-109). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-21742-6_25
Klandermans, B. (2004). The demand and supply of participation: Social-psychological correlates of participation in social movements. En D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, y H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 360–379). Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470999103.ch16
Kirshner, B. (2015). Youth activism in an era of education inequality. NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479861316.001.0001
Keck, M. E., y Sikkink, K. (2014). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801471292
Kühne, R. W. (2019, 2 de septiembre). Climate change: the science behind Greta Thunberg and Fridays for future. OSFPreprints. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/2n6kj
Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental Communication, 4(1), 70–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030903529749
Melucci, A. (1996). Youth, time and social movements. Young, 4(2), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/110330889600400202
Noakes, S. (2017). The advocacy trap: Transnational activism and state power in China. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526119476.001.0001
Noth, F., & Tonzer, L. (2022). Understanding climate activism: Who participates in climate marches such as “Fridays for Future” and what can we learn from it?. Energy Research & Social Science, 84, 102360. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102360
Naciones Unidas (2019, 21 de septiembre). Jóvenes de todo el mundo exigen a los políticos acción contra el cambio climático. Noticias ONU. https://bit.ly/3pNF4hQ
O’brien, K., Selboe, E., y Hayward, B. M. (2018). Exploring youth activism on climate change. Ecology and Society, 23(3), 42. https://doi.org/10.5751/es-10287-230342
Ospina Peralta, P., Idrobo Hidalgo, M. A., & Ospina Peralta, A. T. (2019). ¿Por qué luchar? Motivaciones, organización y estrategias de la militancia juvenil radical en el Siglo XXI. Grupo Faro. https://bit.ly/31LtuvF
Paz, F. (2021). Lo personal es colectivo: jóvenes y medio ambiente. Beers and Politics, 15, 52–55. https://bit.ly/3oSoSwk
Rivas-de-Roca, R. (2020). La configuración del fenómeno ecologista FridaysForFuture como proceso de opinión pública digital en España. Dígitos. Revista de Comunicación Digital, 6, 79–100. https://doi.org/10.7203/rd.v1i6.162
Sabherwal, A., Ballew, M. T., van Der Linden, S., Gustafson, A., Goldberg, M. H., Maibach, E. W., ... y Leiserowitz, A. (2021). The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 51(4), 321–333. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12737
Scott, T. (2020, 14 de enero). An unstoppable wave of youth activism. Green World. https://bit.ly/31gHAAK
Soler i Martí, R., Ferrer-Fons, M., y Terren, L. (2020). The interdependency of online and offline activism: A case study of Fridays For Future-Barcelona in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown. Hipertext.net, 21, 105–114. https://doi.org/10.31009/hipertext.net.2020.i21.09
Teso-Alonso, G. (2021). Los movimientos sociales juveniles ante la emergencia climática y la comunicación del cambio climático. En D. Rodrigo-Cano, R. Mancinas-Chávez, y R. Fernández-Reyes (Eds.), La comunicación del cambio climático, una herramienta ante el gran desafío (pp. 54–120). Dykinson. https://bit.ly/3EQcQJo
Tilly, C. (2006). Los movimientos sociales entran en el siglo veintiuno. Política y sociedad, 42(2), 11–35.
Wahlström, M., Sommer, M., Kocyba, P., de Vydt, M., De Moor, J., Davies, S., ... y Buzogany, A. (2019). Protest for a future: Composition, mobilization and motives of the participants in Fridays For Future climate protests on 15 March 2019 in 13 European cities. Keele University Research Repository. https://bit.ly/3y8cvz6
Wallis, H., y Loy, L. S. (2021). What drives pro-environmental activism of young people? A survey study on the Fridays for Future movement. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 74, 101581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101581
Zuzul, T., & Edmondson, A. C. (2017). The advocacy trap: When legitimacy building inhibits organizational learning. Academy of Management Discoveries, 3(3), 302–321. https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2015.0086
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Ariadna Romans i Torrent
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Ámbitos. Revista Internacional de Comunicación is an open access journal, which means that all content is freely available at no charge to the user or their institution. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without seeking prior permission from the publisher or author. This definition of open access is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).
Unless otherwise noted, all content in the electronic edition is distributed under a "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License". You can consult the informative version and legal text of the licence here. This should be expressly stated in this way where necessary.
In case of acceptance of the manuscript, the authors cede the rights of the work for its publication to Ámbitos. Revista Internacional de Comunicación under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license contract (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The authors retain copyright and third parties are authorised to copy, distribute and make use of the work, provided they comply with the terms and conditions set out in the licence
- Cite the authorship and the original source of publication (journal, publisher and URL of the work).
- Do not use them for commercial purposes.
- If you remix, transform or create from the material, you must release your contributions under the same license as the original.
More information can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es
- Abstract 633
- PDF (Español (España)) 325
