Fridays for Future: How online activism created a movement

Social media is fundamental within this generation. Social media helps to facilitate many forms of expression: the sharing of ideas and the spreading of information across different networking platforms.

When it comes to using social media as a platform to spread ideas, Greta Thunberg is doing a great job at that. For those of you that aren’t entirely sure who she is or what she’s all about, well, I’ll give you a quick introduction. Greta Thunberg is a 16 year old climate activist from Sweden. She started the Fridays for Future movement in May of 2018, when she began skipping school on Friday to protest climate change. She protested outside of the Swedish Parliament and has continued to protest every Friday in different countries. In September of 2019, Greta Thunberg led a climate strike of over 4 million people across 161 countries. That’s crazy! What’s crazier? All of this stemmed from Greta posting online about her lone protests outside of the Swedish Parliament.

Greta used social media to spread awareness about the climate crisis, share her strikes, develop her influence, and increase engagement within the Fridays for Future movement. She used Twitter and Instagram to reach her targeted audience and develop her own personal brand through honesty and transparency.

Greta also teamed up with a band called The 1975 (which just so happens to be my absolute favorite band in the world!). Together, they created a song called The 1975 which is a 5 minute speech made by Greta declaring the climate crisis an emergency and the urgency that needs to be taken. With this partnership, Greta was able to reach an entire different demographic and spread her activism.

Greta Thunberg was also recently announced as Time Magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year for her activism on climate change. Amazing.

Thanks for reading!

#climatechange #timemagazine #activism #gretathunberg #fridaysforfuture