‘Like the Oceans We Rise’: News Frames on Youth for Climate

Abstract

In early 2019, following the example of the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, youth-led climate movements around the world demonstrated massively and persistently for a more ambitious climate policy. News media gave extensive coverage to the climate activists; given that the demonstrations were mostly on school days, public debates on young people’s rights, obligations and political agency were tense and polarized. In this article we take Belgium as a case study and discuss how the Youth for Climate movement was framed in four Dutch-speaking newspapers. Based on an inductive and deductive frame analysis of 126 newspaper articles, we found six frames. Most of the frames tend to challenge persistent views of young people’s political agency, whereas remarkably few support the idea that young people are unfit for politics.

Keywords

Framing media portrayals news media political agency youth activism climate action youth movement Youth for Climate Belgium

Introduction

In 2018 and 2019, young people loudly voiced their concern about the impact of climate change and policy on their future and stepped forward as knowledgeable, articulate and critical agents of a wider movement for climate action (Fisher, 2019). It remains remarkable to see how one Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, was able to inspire and mobilize masses of young people throughout the western world to skip school, march the streets and demand climate action (Bowman, 2019). Belgium was one of the first countries in Europe to engage in climate strikes (Kenis, 2021). On 29 December 2018, two students Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois, at that time 17 and 19 years old, established the Belgian Youth for Climate movement.¹ Early 2019 the number of activists climbed from 3,000 to 35,000 (De Vydt & Wouters, 2019). As a new actor in the field of climate activism (de Moor et al., 2020) the movement succeeded in making climate change the subject of national, political and public debate (Kenis, 2021). The news media coverage of the protest momentum was indeed spectacular.

News media endorsement is crucial for social movements (Boykoff, 2006; Kensicki, 2001; Rucht, 2004; Vliegenthart & Walgrave, 2012). Especially for children who cannot yet legally vote, mass media are important to reflect their demands in political and public discourse (von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021). However, the relation between media and social movement remains problematic and asymmetrical. With regard to social protests of young people, deeply ingrained media biases against children and teenagers affect the way they are framed as political agents. Historically, western social representations of young people’s political agency are contradictory, argues Bessant (2021, p. 17), from innocent and vulnerable ‘puppets of exploitative adults’ to ‘heroic and praiseworthy political activists’ and ‘harbingers of a future’. Related to that, it has often been reiterated that when it comes to ideas about citizenship, young people often come to the fore as ‘becoming’ humans as opposed to stable, complete and self-possessed adult ‘beings’ (Lee, 2001). However, as Lee (2001) continues, our age of uncertainty might break with this distinction. In particular, the uncertainty of global environmental change raises the question how the representation of young people’s political action for climate diverges from dominant ideas on children and young people. It also begs the question of how the disconnect between dominant ideas about what young people should not be doing and what they actually do (cf. Bessant, 2021) is reflected in the public debate.

Against the backdrop of these two issues, this article investigates how seriously the Belgian media take climate youth protesters in the frames they use. Recently, other scholars have investigated comparable questions in other countries (cf. Bergmann & Ossewaarde, 2020; Boulianne et al., 2020; Jacobsson, 2020; Mayes & Hartup, 2021; von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021). As main vectors in both the representation and construction of youth activism, news media coverage remains paramount for understanding how young people’s voices and concerns are supported and subverted in the public sphere (Bessant, 2021). It can indeed be assumed that policymakers are sensitive to news media’s power to galvanize a public sense of urgency around pressing issues (Walgrave & Vliegenthart, 2012).

In this article, we investigate how the mainstream daily press in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium responded to the young climate protesters, and, in this, constructed an image of young people as political agents. Drawing on a frame analysis of 126 newspaper pieces published in four Dutch-language newspapers during the media peak of the Youth for Climate demonstrations, this article elaborates on and adds nuance to the discussion on media representation of young people’s political engagement by focusing on the wider social significance of news frames.

Case: Youth for Climate in Belgium

The start of the climate protests in Belgium dates back to 2007, when about 3,000 people in Brussels protested in light of the climate summit of the UN in Bali (De Vydt, 2020). According to official news reports, it was the first national climate march to ever take place in Belgium, and since then it has become an annual tradition in the run-up to the UN climate summits (De Vydt, 2020). At the time, young people were not yet taking the lead in these climate marches and were marginalized in political, cultural and media discourses on climate change, as found elsewhere in Europe (Corner et al., 2015). However, with the recent wave of global climate activism young people have become key actors (Fisher, 2019). In 2019, a youth-driven worldwide protest flourished with a demand for urgent social and political change (Cretney & Nissen, 2019), denouncing the lack of action by the older generations (Boulianne et al., 2020).

Also in Belgium, a green youth revolution made a breakthrough with young people taking the lead in their fight for a more ambitious climate policy. ‘Why should we go to school if there is no future for us?’ (Youth for Climate, 2018) was the message Youth for Climate Belgium spread on its Facebook platform at the end of December 2018. The movement called for skipping school every Thursday and striking for the climate instead. As explained by Kenis (2021), this plea for civil disobedience did not fall on deaf ears as the protest turnout was huge, certainly in relation to the size of the country. The start of the protests can be situated on 10 January 2019, when 3,000 young pupils took to the streets of Brussels in the very first Belgian climate strike. In the following weeks the young demonstrators climbed up to 14,000 and 35,000. On Sunday 27 January 2019, the biggest climate march ever took place in the country with 70,000 participants (Kenis, 2021). Tempers flared in the political debate: the Minister of Nature and Environment, Joke Schauvliege, resigned in early February 2019 after erroneously accusing the climate protests as an organized plot against her, allegedly confirmed by State Security (De Morgen, 2019). Another pivotal moment was 15 March 2019, when 1.4 million protesters joined the youth strike for climate change worldwide (Boulianne et al., 2020).

Although Wahlström et al. (2019) argue that no other youth movement has had such a worldwide reception before, it would be incorrect to suggest that the mass appeal and mediatization of these youth protests is unprecedented (see for example O’Donnell, 2010). It would be just as wrong to claim that the new climate movements, such as Fridays for Future and Youth for Climate, bring a new narrative. Rather, they articulate old concerns, and in doing so, centre more on crisis and emergency (Cretney & Nissen, 2019). It is, however, pointed out that the European climate protests of 2018 and 2019 differ from older youth protest movements in significant ways. First, they were led by relatively young peopleaged between 14 and 19and strongly dominated by girls and young women (Bowman, 2019; de Moor et al., 2020). Second, de Moor et al. (2020) point at the importance of disobedient actions and targeting local and national governments, whereas prior climate movements had the tendency to blame transnational institutions and the fossil fuel industry, and to encourage people to engage in ‘do-it-yourself’ forms of actions. Likewise, Holmberg and Alvinius (2020) argue that the recent resistance of children in relation to climate emergency is unprecedented in its abstract character, as it mobilizes the wider public, targets policy and is concerned about the greater good. It is also pronounced in its progressive criticism against those in power. This is an important note when trying to understand how the news media have portrayed the protesters.

Media Coverage of Youth Protest Movements

Representations of young people’s political agency are very often contradictory with images of youth as ‘unwitting victims’, ‘objects of anxieties and fantasies’ but also ‘purposeful political actors’ (Bessant, 2021, p. 5). For protest coverage in particular, mainstream media show a tendency to not take young protesters seriously. For example, research on youth protests that are distinctly concerned with issues of power, dominance and inequality points in the direction of frames and media images that do not endorse public support and sympathy (Cammaerts, 2013; Cushion, 2007; Mampaey et al., 2019; Turcotte-Summers, 2016).

Closer to our research focus, studies exploring newspaper coverage of school strikes and university student walkouts during school hours as forms of youth protest have found that the robust concept of youth and childhood as incompetent and immature subjects with little or no political agency is still persistent (Such et al., 2005). These news stories typically trivialize young people’s concerns and belittle their demands (Mampaey et al., 2019). For example, research on newspaper coverage of the historical Canadian student strike against rising tuition fees explains how young protesters were framed as lazy, egocentric, spoiled and inexperienced children; too young to be included as legitimate participants in democratic debates and in the end constructed as a problem of authority in itself, rather than political agents addressing an issue with great impact on young people’s educational opportunities (Gulliver & Herriot, 2015; Turcotte-Summers, 2016). Belgian research on similar student strikes corroborates this and illustrates how the Dutch-language press tends to perceive young people as subjects of inevitable political decision rather than agents of political action (Mampaey et al., 2019).

More recently, it has been suggested that the current wave of climate activism might challenge the dominant representation of young people as inadequate political agents (Bessant, 2021). Research thus far does not seem to substantiate this claim. For example, Jacobsson (2020) found that in Swedish newspapers activists are positioned as ‘dreamers’ in relation to political possibilities’ and that their activism is ‘denuded’ of its political relevance by making their critique of capitalismwhich is in fact an important building block of the movement’s agendainvisible (pp. 3–5). A similar observation is made by Bergmann and Ossewaarde (2020) about German newspaper coverage where activists were pictured again as dreamers, (too) young and with unthoughtful, ‘unwarranted’ or ‘unrealistic’ claims (p. 282). Although Mayes and Hartup (2021) found that Australian newspapers predominantly sympathized with young strikers, journalists also associated them with negative emotions (e.g., anxiety) and qualities (e.g., hypocrite, naïve, ignorant, vulnerable, violent).

Another persistent representation in mainstream news media is that of young protesters causing violence and disorder (Cammaerts, 2013; Cushion, 2007). For example, during protests in 2010 against increased tuition fees in the United Kingdom, the media emphasized violence and internal conflicts within the movement creating a dichotomy between good and peaceful protesters on the one hand, and bad and violent protesters on the other (Cammaerts, 2013). General media coverage of young people also tends to focus on crime and violence (Lepianka, 2015; Levinsen & Wien, 2011). Likewise, the limited research on Youth for Climate indicates that young protesters are positioned as truants of which the motives to skip school can be doubted; in so doing, they are presented as the deviant ‘other’ and dysfunctional troublemaker who disrupts order (Bergmann & Ossewaarde, 2020; von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021).

By putting the joyfulness of the protests in the spotlight rather than the concerns of the protesters, news media have portrayed the movement as an example of ‘mass hysteria’ (Mayes & Hartup, 2021, p. 14) and childlike outbursts of ‘energetic, hopeful children gathering to watch their idol on stage’ (Jacobsson, 2020, pp. 8–10). Especially, by centralizing the figure of Greta Thunberg the demand for action on climate change is downplayed (Ryalls & Mazzarella, 2021), reducing the strike to a personal testimony rather than a political movement (von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021).

However, it would be wrong to label mainstream media as a monolith and opponent of civil unrest (Cammaerts, 2013). Indeed, positive representations of social protest and its participants are also found in mainstream news (Cammaerts & Carpentier, 2009; Elmasry & el-Nawawy, 2017; Kensicki, 2001), certainly regarding environmental movements (Kilgo & Harlow, 2019). Although frames that legitimize the School Strike for Climate are rather rare and mostly limited to the intergenerational justice frame, climate activists are also presented as possessing self-agency and undertaking a ‘courageous fight’ (von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021, p. 15).

Method

The methodological approach taken in this study is a frame analysis. Building on Van Gorp (2007, 2010) we see frames as a meta-communicative message and central organizing idea that is constructed via a frame package. Such a frame package consists of manifest framing devices, such as use of metaphors, stereotypes, lexical choices. Implicit and explicit reasoning devices are also essential to the frame package as they construct a definition, explanation, justification, problematization, and moral evaluation of the event. In journalism, frames are used as ‘a persuasive invitation, a stimulus, to read a news story in a particular way’ (Van Gorp, 2007, p. 72). In doing so, news stories aim to both play and tap into public opinion, drawing on a shared repertoire of frames in culture that function as points of signification, typification, identification, evaluation, and so on (Van Gorp, 2007).

Figure 1.

Source: Data of GoPress Academic.

Since we wanted to determine which frames of young people’s political agency were circulating and engaging the public sphere, we decided to concentrate on the period in which the demonstrations were growing. This fell together with a peak in media coverage from January 2019 until 31 March 2019 (see Figure 1). We centred on four leading Dutch-language newspapers, including two elite newspapersDe Standaard (DS); De Morgen (DM)and two popular newspapersHet Laatste Nieuws (HLN); Het Nieuwsblad (HN). In Flanders, the newspaper market is organized as a near-duopoly, with HLN and DM owned by DPG Media, and DS and HN belonging to Mediahuis. As argued by Moernaut et al. (2019), the historical differences between these newspapers in terms of political leaning have become less pronounced, but still play a role as marketing strategies. DS and DM are typically considered quality newspapers. DS had a conservative, catholic political leaning with strong roots in the Flemish movement, but since its restyling in 1999 the newspaper has worked hard to shake off this image. DM has a socialist background and presents itself today as a progressive, independent quality newspaper. On the popular end of the spectrum, HLN, with historical liberal background, and HN, with roots in the catholic labour movement, are known for a more sensationalist style of journalism in Flanders. During the period of research, HLN had the largest reach with about 2.3 million daily readers, followed by HN with 2 million readers, DS with 1.1 million readers and DM attracting 831,900 readers (CIM, 2019).

The data were sampled from the GoPress Academic database. Articles were all qualified if they contained a minimum of 500 words and direct references to one or more keywords. Both ‘climate truant’ (klimaatspijbelaar*), which has a rather negative connotation, and ‘climate youth’ (klimaatjongere*) were used as keywords, assuming that in this way the sample would reflect positive as well as negative perspectives on the movement, and not preclude possible frames. ‘Anuna De Wever’ and ‘Kyra Gantois’, the two spokespersons of Youth for Climate, were also used as keywords, considering that movement leaders often play a leading role in news frames (Morris & Staggenborg, 2004). Articles that only mentioned the keywords without centralizing the climate youth were not included. To give an exhaustive overview about the lively public debate at the time, the sample was not limited to news articles, but also included op-eds, columns, and readers’ letters which equally go through a strategic gatekeeping selection process by the newspaper, predominantly in accordance with the newspaper’s agenda and framing process (Coleman & Ross, 2010).

A balanced mix of 62 pieces from popular newspapers (21 from HN and 41 from HLN) and 64 from elite newspapers (21 from DS and 43 from DM) were in this way selected for analysis. The total sample of 126 articles consisted of 8 readers’ letters, 7 opinion pieces, 6 interviews, 3 columns, 5 editorials and 97 news articles.

Following Van Gorp (2007, 2010), the analysis consisted of a qualitative inductive stage and quantitative deductive stage. In the first stage we opted to distil the frames from the newspaper articles through open, axial and selective coding, largely based on the Grounded Theory-inspired analytic procedures of Van Gorp (2007, 2010). The software application MAXQDA was used for systematically handling the data analysis. During the open coding, the data was ‘opened’ by breaking the meanings of the texts into their components. The aim was to make an inventory of all framing devices used in the newspaper articles, such as choice of words, archetypes, metaphors, stereotypes, slogans, catchphrases, descriptions and illustrations. In this first step, we also looked at the roles of different actors in the framing process. The axial coding step consists in ordering the open codes to identify recurring patterns. In this second step, we scanned for central ideas, similarities, differences and contradictions. Attention was also paid to the reasoning devices used. After that, codes were bundled in overarching categories with as little overlap as possible. This step enabled us to gain sufficient distance from our taken-for-granted assumptions and to move to a more abstract and analytical level.

The final step of the inductive phase consisted of selective coding, which involved more refinement. After organizing the codes into core categories and clusters, we reconstructed the components of the different so-called frame packages in terms of the framing and reasoning devices used and put a name to the frame that articulates larger cultural values, stereotypes, myths, archetypes or fears the frame resonates with.

In the second stage, we assessed for each newspaper article the core frame. As Van Gorp (2007) argues, media texts can consist of elements that are ‘incongruent with the dominant frame’, but the effect of a leading frame lies precisely in the fact that it makes elements that are in line with the frame more salient (p. 66). In that way the most dominant frame was distilled based on the most salient devices in the media text. Because frame analysis involves interpretations, subjectivity is an important ethical issue (Van Gorp, 2010). In this study, we aimed to avoid subjective involvement by bracketing our own beliefs and sympathies during the coding process. We followed the coding procedures (described above) systematically and adopted a rigorously reflexive approach to our analysis, challenging each other’s interpretation and engagement. In the next section, we chart the frames that were inductively reconstructed from all newspaper items and discuss them from the most to the least prevalent frame in terms of frequency (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Source: Created by the authors based on the dataset (HN, HLN, DM, DS).

News Frames of Youth for Climate

Angry Young People

With titles such as ‘Angry! Furious! Enraged!’ (Neyt, 2019), this frame (25%) gives prominence to the powerful moral emotions like disillusionment, righteous anger and ethical energy shown in young people’s political action (cf. Bessant, 2021). Typically, it features and cites the young demonstrators directly, exposing their indignation in youth lingo, strong language and curse words, as the following excerpt illustrates: ‘Defeatists? We are not. No fucking way’ (Van Horenbeek, 2019).

All this adds up to a framing of young people who are able to voice their demands, but in a very emotional way. The youngsters are depicted as unsatisfied with current climate policy, not to mention fed up with politicians who do not tackle the climate problem as something serious and who keep postponing the necessary measures. The criticism they receive for skipping school is also tackled with ethical arguments about higher causes such as ‘What is an hour of maths if you can protest for a better climate?’, citing climate leaders Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois (Vermeiren, 2019).

The frame positions the motivations of the young climate protesters in opposition to negligence, ignorance and disdain of the grown-up world, making the anti-adult undercurrent of the movement the most salient as the following phrases by young protestors reveal:

We are risking remarks, detentions and diplomas, while they curl up. (Vansina, 2019)

It is our future that is being ruined. We are going to die a silent death if we do nothing. (Provoost, 2019)

This frame is clearly imbued with an emotional tone, as shown in the language used in the headlines and content of the articles, and for that reason, from a typically adult point of view, possibly risks undermining the validity of the young people’s call for action which is predominantly based on the persistent image of young people as lacking rationality. Yet, at the same time, the frame also pays considerable attention to the young protesters’ concrete demands such as public transport reforms or climate education at school.

Overall, the frame suggests a sympathetic attitude towards the young climate protesters, supporting their anti-political sentiments and appreciating their audacity to say how matters really stand. One article, a column written by an editor-in-chief, illustrates this clearly by comparing the young (women) demonstrators with Antigone, the classical Greek tragedy character who defies the ruling class with courage, passion and determination (Delvaux, 2019).

The Promise of Youth

The emotional dimension of young people’s politics returns in this frame (22%), but unlike the previous frame it is tied to the more constructive idea of hope. This frame positions the strikes for climate as a historical, disruptive momentum never seen before and journalists present climate youth as real game changers who have stirred up the climate change discussion ‘from your breakfast table over the schools and from the Flemish Parliament to the European Commission’ (Saelens, 2019), dominating discussion on schools, in politics and among the general public.

Indeed, newspaper articles that apply this frame indicate that climate change is picked up as an important theme for schools via the creation of climate committees, workshops and climate weeks, and construct the Youth for Climate movement as the leading cause of this. The frame also insists on the idea that it becomes impossible for politicians to ignore the youth protesters and their demands, and that they can no longer refuse to really get involved in the debate, take measures and make new promises. Articles make forecasts of shifting political election campaigns and point at the impact of the protest on Flemish government policy, as this journalist forecasts: ‘The Great Political Signal will probably no longer come, but we do seem to be heading for a campaign in which the debate can be conducted on the merits’ (Wauters, 2019).

The central organizing theme in this frame is clearly geared towards the idea of regeneration, with young people ‘looking uncomfortably to the world they inherit’ (O’Donnell, 2010, p. 381) and symbolizing a different and better future (cf. Bessant, 2021). This is particularly articulated in the attention given to the young demonstrators’ impact on the older generations, such as their parents and grandparents, becoming more conscious about climate change. Terms such as a ‘paradigm shift’ or a ‘a new battlefield’ suggest that thanks to the climate protests the general public finally is concerned about climate change (Kelepouris, 2019). In the news coverage of the national climate marches during weekends, neologisms [used by journalists] such as ‘climate granddaddy’ and ‘climate granny’ (De Boeck, 2019) are coined to describe the phenomenon whereby young people stoke the fires of protest among older generations. In this frame, the idea of generational solidarity is very prominent. It is also intensified by how experts and journalists compare the significance, energy and impact of the Youth for Climate demonstrations with other memorable marches in Belgium, such as the student protests of May 1968 and the White March of 1993 in the wake of the Dutroux affair, both leading to major reforms of Belgian policy, education and culture.

The Incorruptible

The third frame (19%) found in newspaper coverage portrays climate strikers as trustworthy, credible, solid and knowledgeable agents, genuinely involved and concerned about the climate issue. Supported by accounts coming from parents, journalists, teachers, schoolmasters, experts and politicians, young people’s political engagement is presented as earnest and authentic, as the following phrases exemplify:

[quote from journalist] ‘After four times of striking, there is still not a dent in his commitment.’ (Martin, 2019)

[quote from politician] ‘I see pure social engagement and action.’ (Het Laatste Nieuws, 2019a)

[quote from headmaster] ‘So far we know that whoever goes always does it out of conviction.’ (Lanssens, 2019)

This frame is an invitation to perceive young activists as having a sound knowledge of the climate issue, and therefore endorses the credibility of their social protest and political criticism. Rather than presenting their demands as ‘dogmatic mumbo-jumbo’ (Martin, 2019), as one journalist points out, they are staged as knowledgeable agents, supported by experts and more mature students.

Furthermore, the consistency of young people’s actions is appreciated by the above discussed actors which again endorses the image of strongly committed and trustworthy young people who practise what they preach. For example, a renowned professor of economics writes in his column: ‘there is also a great willingness to apply principles to protect the planet from future catastrophes in daily life’ (De Grauwe, 2019). By letting young people tell in their own words what they do for the environment, the firmness of their political action is emphasized. Coupled with that, their awareness of and action on climate change is not presented as something transient, but as an essential component of their generation, confronted with the legacies of environmental inaction.

In particular, the controversy surrounding the then Flemish Minister of Nature and Environment, Joke Schauvliege, is used in this frame to strengthen the young protesters’ incorruptibility. The minister had claimed in a speech to the General Farmers Syndicate on 2 February 2019 that the Youth for Climate demonstrations were a fabrication and that the state security agency had informed her about the plot’s mastermind. Rather than questioning the sincerity of the protests, this news story in fact boosted the credibility of the young protesters and put enormous political pressure on the minister. She later retracted her claim and resigned as minister on 5 February 2019.

Young Charlatans

Unlike the previous frames, the fourth frame (16%) takes a more critical view on Youth for Climate and portrays the young protesters as untrustworthy and unreliable. The arsenal of symbolic devices that is used in this frame points in the direction of four key messages. First, the young climate activists are depicted as fake demonstrators who, in contrast to what they claim, do not care about the climate at all. Some articles suggest that youth themselves are in fact the biggest polluters which makes their demands hypocritical, inconsistent and implausible, as the following quote from a readers’ letter illustrates:

Young people who go on city trips by plane or backpack many times a year to explore nature on the other side of the endangered planet. The sites after the festivals are chock-full of residual waste. I think that is hypocritical. (Nijs, 2019)

Second, this frame presents truancy as a very opportunist and idle means for action that requires little engagement and motivation. Some articles explicitly delegitimize their civil disobedience and object to schools’ general permissiveness vis-à-vis truancy, as this journalist in an editorial suggests: ‘But isn’t it about time to expose the so-called ‘climate truant’ as a contradiction in terms?’ (Segers, 2019b).

Third, the gap between what young people are striving for and what they actually know and believe, is furthermore accentuated by journalists labelling their claims as unrealistic (Segers, 2019a) and experts labelling their protest slogans as ‘stupid’ (Bosmans, 2019). Especially their knowledge about the climate issue and the political system is questioned. Young people are depicted as not being able to provide concrete answers and arguments to the question why they are demonstrating and how they believe the climate problem should be tackled structurally. This contributes to an image of young people who are indeed hard to believe or to take seriously. By mentioning the different conspiracy theories that circulate about the youth protests, young people are presented as hand puppets and dupes of political forces, not able to think for themselves.

Lastly, protesters are perceived as atypical young people, not representative of all young people living in Flanders, and therefore not voicing general discontent but only the concerns of a small, white, higher educated and privileged part of society. This view, implicitly suggesting that typical young people are politically apathetic rather than engaged, actually contributes to the idea that climate youth does not speak on behalf of a generation, and that there is a silent majority that might think differently.

Good Citizenship

Framed as persons who behave well and sensibly without the need for supervision, the Youth for Climate protesters transpire in the fifth frame (13%) as responsible young people. This is probably the frame by which young people are most saliently constructed as competent political agents who come close to the ideal of adult citizens capable of independent thought and action. Hence, in this frame the school strikes are not emptied of their political relevance, but only discussed in positive terms. In fact, skipping school islike two professors contend in an opinion piececonstructed as a form of ‘disruptive citizenship education or critical counter-citizenship’ (Agirdag & Claes, 2019), and is legitimized by teachers, schoolmasters, and commentators as an indispensable form of civil disobedience; a demonstration of civic spirit and critical citizenship as, inter alia, promoted by the Flemish teaching plans and pedagogical projects.

If in this frame mention is made of school sanctions against young people skipping class, the young people themselves are framed as willing to bear the consequences, behaving like responsible and docile pupils. Hence, journalists write about young people accepting the sanctions and let them explain in their own words how they try to combine their political engagement with education, such as alternating school attendance with participation in marches, keeping up with school and holding educational sit-ins while playing truant. Likewise, the peaceful course of the protests is illuminated in these articles as an indication of self-governance and organizational adeptness (cf. Bessant, 2021). For example, journalists point out that the climate protests are happening without problems, without violence, without traffic chaos and in ‘remarkably good humour and with a sense of decorum’ (Vincent, 2019), leaving the streets ‘immaculate’ (Het Laatste Nieuws, 2019b).

Unruly Youth

The sixth frame (5%) probably articulates the most negative view on Youth for Climate, resonating with one of the most persistent historical representations of young people as troublesome future state citizens and deviant troublemakers. Here, young protesters are criticized for not thinking of the personal and social damage of their actions. In fact, their political agency is completely ignored, and they are reduced to unruly or bad pupils who run the risk of school failure, as exemplified by this journalist’s note: ‘elections in May, exams in June: that can be a problem for many school reports’ (Deblaere, 2019).

Although there were practically no incidents during the marches, this frame zooms in on young people’s risky behaviour during the first protest, when the protesters decided to march rather than stay put on the square that was allocated to them. In accentuating adolescents’ developing brains, the young protesters are framed as immature and unable to assess the danger of traffic situations when running onto the streets and causing traffic chaos.

Discussion and Conclusion

In early 2019, Belgium was one of the first European countries to engage in Youth for Climate strikes, widely publicized and well-attended. Based on a frame analysis of 126 newspaper items, this article aimed to unravel the Belgian news frames on the Youth for Climate movement during the peak of the demonstrations. The research literature typically argues that mainstream media have the tendency not to take young protestors seriously. Media coverage of school strikes and Youth for Climate strikes has been found to deny young people’s concerns and demands (Mampaey et al., 2019), thereby creating an image of young people unfit as political agents (Bergmann & Ossewaarde, 2020; Jacobsson, 2020; Such et al., 2005). However, the results of our research prove otherwise. The three most dominant frames (Angry Young People, The Promise of Youth, The Incorruptible) found in the Belgian press seem to contribute to a representation of young people who are capable of voicing their demands; incentivize future-oriented action; are trustworthy, credible, solid, and knowledgeable agents; and bring a message of hope. In doing so, those frames accentuate young people capable of being political agents who can constructively contribute to democracy. Our three most common frames tend to acknowledge young people’s demand for political action. Although much attention is given to the emotional dimension of their political engagement, they are framed as serious players who have indeed influenced the political and public debate. The resignation of the Flemish Minister of Nature and Environment under pressure from the media and public opinion was significant in that respect.

Although it can be argued that all six frames play a part in offering a spectrum of possibilities to the representation of young people’s political agency, the quantitative assessment of the core frames indicated that some frames are more prominent or have more social significance than others. Unlike previous literature on youth protest in general (Cammaerts, 2013; Cushion, 2007) and on climate youth in particular (Bergmann & Ossewaarde, 2020; von Zabern & Tulloch, 2021), we found that violence and disorder were under-represented in Belgian media coverage, and less salience was given to the truancy of the pupils presenting them as the deviant ‘other’ and dysfunctional troublemakers. The only other frame that constructs a young person as a defective becoming and in so doing explicitly encourages scepticism to Youth for Climate, was the Young Charlatans frame. These frames suggesting that young people should not be allowed to participate in political activity, cannot be full citizens or behave as adult citizens, and are thus unfit for political life, were less pronounced in media reporting. Most of the frames we found actually did not endorse this media image. Angry Young People and The Promise of Youth functioned in about one quarter of the newspaper items as the central organizing theme and implied a more constructive understanding of childhood as the possibility of change. Incorruptible Youth and Good Citizenship, the two other more outspoken favourable frames, brought salience to young people’s maturity and self-governance as full human beings.

Regarding the wider social significance of the frames, we can argue that the Belgian press coverage on Youth for Climate articulated a view of young people’s political agency that gives priority to the powerful potentiality of becoming, as Lee (2001) would call it. The long-standing ideas about young people in terms of ‘unstable incompleteness’ and ‘lacking independence of thought and action that merits respect’ (Lee, 2001, p. 5), is not how young people are conceived in the press we analysed. Although much salience is given to the emotional state of young people, typically a frame that older people would use to produce a paternalist account of young people’s political agency (Bessant, 2021; Lee, 2001), we found frames that present emotions such as hope, anger and disillusionment as authentic and powerful political catalysts (Angry Young People; The Promise of Youth) (see also, Bowman, 2019). Furthermore, we also found two frames (Incorruptible Youth; Good Citizenship) that construct young people as competent political agents, as full beings, or as Lee (2001, p. 5) would say, self-possessed and self-controlling, solid, stable, and organizationally adept; therefore, suited to political life (cf. Bessant, 2021). If the age of uncertainty and disruption, as Lee (2001) argues, is destabilizing western society’s view on children-as-becoming and adults-as-being, we are inclined to say that the specific public debate we analysed is symptomatic of this shift.

A number of reasons may be behind this. First, other studies on climate change coverage in Flemish mainstream newspapers have shown that frames pointing to the need to change human actions are very prominent. Also, the environmental justice frame proves to be salient, holding the dominant groups in society accountable for not solving the environmental crisis and letting vulnerable people, such as young people, pay the bill (Moernaut et al., 2018; Moernaut et al., 2019). The newsworthiness and favourable coverage of the Youth for Climate protests can thus perhaps be attributed to the fact that these events fit well with the dominant frames in the mainstream press. It can indeed be argued that young people’s call for change and action is consistent with Flemish mainstream media’s tendency to see climate action as legitimate. Second, the participants’ youthful age (with primary and secondary school children) and large turnout of girls might also have favoured a more positive framing of the protesters, as these are typically seen as more vulnerable. This brings us to the limitation of our research. The investigation period was limited to a three-month period, which covered only news articles from the beginning of the protest at a moment when the movement was still relatively new and unknown. Perhaps a stretching of the research period would reveal other, more negative and critical viewpoints on Youth for Climate. Further longitudinal research could explore the period when the protest was toned down and the interest for the movement faded away. How do newspapers discuss the impact of the protest? How do the media portray Youth for Climate after the election results, for example? Aside from this, we can carefully conclude that this significant momentum of protest finally produced a representation of young people that does justice to young people’s actual political engagement.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Note

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