Performances of Leadership by Influencers and Organizations in the Climate Activist Discourse

• In Event: 20220 - Section on Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Section on Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Roundtable X: Social Media II

Abstract

Historically, social movement organizations have been instrumental in leading movements, such as creating opportunities for protest and engaging the media. However, on social media, social movement organizations don’t often surface among the most influential voices. This presses the question of how the performances of leadership by influential accounts compare to those of social movement organizations. I address this gap by observing the performances of leadership by networked influencers and social movement organizations engaged in climate activism discourse on Twitter during the 2022 UN Climate Summit. I am currently performing a content analysis on tweets authored by highly retweeted accounts, highly active accounts, and a selection of accounts belonging to social movement organizations. To observe performances of leadership in the climate activist movement, I sampled approximately 290,000 tweets during the 2022 UN Climate Summit containing hashtags related to climate activism and climate skepticism and 4,500 profiles authored and/or engaged by those tweets. I am performing a semi-grounded content analysis on the tweets from networked influencers and social movement organizations. Using Earl’s leading task framework, I am interpreting themes and patterns that emerge from my sample. The final paper will elaborate the relationship between the themes that emerged from influencers’ and organizations’ tweets and the leading tasks developed by Earl (2007).

Author

• Kyle Rose, Florida State University