Framing Greta: The Visual Construction of Climate Activism

The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has become an emblematic figure in the current debate on the climate crisis. Her public appearances (e.g. at the United Nations Climate Change Summit) and activities (e.g. her transatlantic trip in a fast ocean sailing boat) generate huge publicity, cause extensive media coverage, and lead to controversial and heated debates on social media. International top politicians such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, or US-Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refer to Thunberg’s demands, stage themselves with her in front of cameras, and post photos on their official social-media-accounts (e.g. Guterres 2019a/b; Merkel 2019; Ocasio-Cortez 2019; Van der Bellen 2019a/b). Thunberg herself also curates her public “persona” via social media as means of strategic self-framing. This paper compares Thunberg’s strategic self-framing on the social media platform Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/gretathunberg) with frames created by international top politicians. The corpus of the analysis consists of several Instagram postings of Greta Thunberg and a theoretically sensitive sample of top politician’s relevant Instagram postings referring to the young activist. Based on a multi-modal frame analysis, this paper asks whether and how the current climate crisis is addressed in these postings, what role and agency is ascribed to Thunberg, and how international top politicians position themselves in relation to Thunberg’s environmental activism and her demands. Following Robert Entman’s (1993) definition of framing as selection, salience and moral evaluation, this paper reconstructs the visual construction of Greta Thunberg in the elite climate discourse. It thereby contributes to discussions on the visual framing of the climate crisis (Grittmann 2013), the personalization and visualization of prevalent political debates, and the analysis of the strategic usage of social media accounts by political actors. References: Entman, Robert M. 1993: Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51-58. Grittmann, Elke 2013: Visual Frames – Framing Visuals. Zum Zusammenhang von Diskurs, Frame und Bild in den Medien am Beispiel des Klimawandeldiskurses. In: Stephanie Geise/Katharina Lobinger (eds.): Visual Framing. Perspektiven und Herausforderungen der Visuellen Kommunikationsforschung. Köln: Halem, 95-116. Sources: Guterres, António 2019a: Instagram Posting (3 July 2019), URL https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzbt-JFgJEi/ Guterres, António 2019b: Instagram-Posting (9 October 2019), URL https://www.instagram.com/p/B3X-piFAULX/ Merkel, Angela 2019: Instagram-Posting (23 September 2019), URL https://www.instagram.com/p/B2wlwspIDOK/ Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria 2019: Instagram-Posting (29 June 2019), URL https://www.instagram.com/p/BzTULmlggoS/ Van der Bellen, Alexander 2019a: Instagram-Posting (21 September 2019), URL https://www.instagram.com/p/B2r8Pq6lQpF/ Van der Bellen, Alexander 2019b: Instagram-Posting (13 December 2019), URL https://www.instagram.com/p/B6BBqasihJc/