PUBLICATION - Digital Issue Movements

(16-11-2021)

This paper explores youths’ political participation patterns in the context of the 2019 youth-led climate strikes. Since it often remains unclear how and why young citizens are combining various forms of political participation, this study aimed to identify different types of climate activists among Belgian high school students. Therefore, a latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to assess how different political participation types (both offline and through social media) are combined in unique ‘participation repertoires’. In addition, a multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze how these different types of activists differ from each other in terms of political efficacies, climate issue involvement and online expression motives in these participation patterns.  Four different participation repertoires regarding the climate issue were identified, each distinctive in the way they rely on different forms of political participation (ranging from participation in the weekly climate strikes to posting about petitions on Facebook). In general, the article shows how SNS make up a crucial part of youths’ issue-specific participation patterns and sheds light on the mechanisms underlying their participation choices within the climate movement.

Read the full article here or contact Cato Waeterloos