Fridays for Future Meets Citizen Science

The Fridays For Future (FFF) climate protests mobilized more than four million people around the globe in September 2019. In contrast to previous youth movements, FFF has been strikingly successful in drawing global attention and appealing not only to teenage peers but also to all segments of society. There has been extensive research on FFF since Greta Thunberg’s first protest in August 2018. So far, most studies have dealt with the activists' reliance on social media and peer networks, their limited commitment to traditional organizations, or their socioeconomic characteristics such as the strong female presence. While that research has shed light on relevant features of the movement that help to understand the mobilization success. However, most findings have remained on the macro level of the phenomenon. For instance, there is a blatant lack of knowledge on the different ways of mobilizing on local ground. Looking at 600 different local groups let alone in Germany, more in depth micro level analyses are palpable. This research gap is where the paper feeds into. Based on a citizen science project at the University of Duesseldorf, Germany, that brings scholars and local FFF activists on a level playing field together, the paper presents findings on two research questions: (1) how does the local youth movement mobilize people to join the different forms of protest? (2) what specific strategies and means make the movement successful in terms of mass mobilization? Against this backdrop, the project aims to identify factors beyond the movement and the protest issue that might help to increase political participation in general. The research project differs from previous methodologies by making the activists part of the knowledge producing process. The rationale behind giving ownership to those citizen scientists is that the activists are better equipped to address the relevant questions and methods than traditional scholars. The paper will be divided into five parts. Following the introduction (1), a brief literature review will illustrate the substantial amount of studies dealing with protest movements in general and FFF in particular (2). Addressing the lack of academic attention to the local FFF ground, the differences and commonalities of the 600 different local groups in Germany will be identified (3). Based on this the findings of a case study on the mobilization strategies by the local FFF group in Duesseldorf will be presented in response to the two research questions mentioned above (4). The implications for research and policymaking will be eventually discussed from a citizen science perspective (5).