Are social media making constructive policymaking harder? - M Schäfer and P North

Further Reading

North, P. (2011) The politics of climate activism in the UK: a social movement analysis. Environment and Planning A. 43(7): 1581–1598.

This paper uses social movement theory to explore the limits and possibilities of climate activism in the UK. It explores why climate activism emerged when it did and how climate activism takes place in a diverse range of political spaces and scales. Yet it remains unclear whether climate activism has the motive power to move to more sustainable ways of organising human society.

Pearce, W., Niederer, S., Özkula, S.M. and Querubín, N.S. (2019) The social media life of climate change: platforms, publics, and future imaginaries. WIREs Climate Change. 10(2): e569. DOI: 10.1002/wcc.569.

This article provides a critical review of the literature on social media and climate change. It shows how social media collapse the ‘six degrees of separation’ which have previously characterised many social networks and break down many of the barriers to individuals communicating with each other. The authors show how this is having profound effects across society, opening up new channels for public debates and revolutionising the communication of prominent public issues such as climate change.

Schradie, J. (2019) The Revolution that Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favours Conservatives. Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This study of online political mobilisation shows that money and organisational sophistication influ- ence politics online as much as they do offline and casts doubt on the democratising power of digital activism. Digital activism is proving more effective for large hierarchical political organisations with professional staff than horizontally organised volunteer groups.

Pearce, W., Niederer, S., Özkula, S.M. and Querubín, N.S. (2019) The social media life of climate change: platforms, publics, and future imaginaries. WIREs Climate Change. 10(2): e569. DOI: 10.1002/wcc.569.

Social movement theory > an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilisation occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, and political consequences. > Look into this more, might provide a good theoretical framework/structure