Polarizing social figures? Climate activists in German media and popular discourse

ABSTRACT Although attitudes towards climate change are generally uncontroversial in Europe, the public discourse on climate change is becoming increasingly contentious. This article introduces the climate activist as a social figure through which the discursive polarization around climate change policy can be understood. Developing a notion of a social figure that draws on cultural boundary-making, social psychology, and moral sociology, the article examines how climate activists are presented in popular and media discourse. Empirically, the analysis combines qualitative content analysis of group discussions with computational text analysis applied to a large sample of German newspaper articles. The findings indicate that negative attitudes towards climate protesters do not necessarily imply skepticism towards climate change or rejection of climate policies in general. Rather, it is the social figure of the climate activist that elicits strong support or opposition because of conflicts over a rule-based social order. In German newspapers, more radical groups such as the Letzte Generation (Last Generation) are portrayed more negatively and with harsher vocabulary than Fridays for Future activists. Moreover, climate activists are often portrayed as having negative character traits. The negative depiction of climate activists is driven by the tabloid newspaper BILD, which portrays them as a security threat.