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In September 2019, the third Global Climate Strike organized by the Fridays For Future (FFF) protest campaign mobilized 6000 protest events in 185 countries and brought 7.6 million participants out onto the streets. This report analyses survey data about participants from 19 cities around the world and compares it to data from an international survey conducted in 13 European cities in March 2019. Both surveys collected data following the well-established “Caught in the Act of Protest” survey methodology in order to generate representative samples. What makes FFF new and particularly interesting is the involvement of schoolchildren and students as initiators, organizers and participants in climate activism on a large scale. The September mobilizations differed from the March events in the explicit call for adults to join the movement. Although older age cohorts were more strongly represented in September, young people continued to make up a substantial portion of the protestors – almost one third of demonstrators were aged 19 or under. Additionally, there was a high proportion of female FFF protestors. In both surveys nearly 60% of participants identified as female – with the largest share among the youngest demonstrators. Overwhelming majorities of adult participants were well educated and had a university degree. Moreover, a large proportion of young people participating in the September strikes had parents who had studied at university level. Despite the young age of the participants, interpersonal mobilization was the predominant method of recruitment to the strikes, particularly among friends and schoolmates. However, the growth in the size and popularity of the movement also includes a growing share of people who participate alone. Around a quarter of adults fit this category, as well as an initially small but growing number of young people. When expressing their emotions concerning climate change and global warming, the majority of protesters felt worried, frustrated and angered, as well as anxious about the future, although they did not often express a feeling of hopelessness. Therefore, despite a general tendency of decreasing hopefulness that important environmental issues can be addressed through policies, FFF participants show that their action is driven by feelings, awareness of the issues and a willingness to engage in finding solutions. In answer to a series of questions concerning solutions to environmental problems, respondents were divided over whether modern science could be relied on to solve environmental problems. Agreement varied between cities and age-groups on the degree to which they thought stopping climate change could be accomplished through voluntary individual lifestyle changes. However, there was more unity in skepticism towards relying on companies and the market to solve these problems. In conclusion, surveys of the strikes in March and September indicate important elements of continuity, as well as a small degree of change. Female participants and people with higher education predominate, interpersonal mobilization – particularly among friends – remains a central factor in recruiting support, and protesters are mostly driven by feelings of frustration, anger and anxiety. However, the age of protestors is becoming more diverse, protesters’ hopefulness seems to be in decline, and the “Greta effect” is becoming less influential. The report findings suggest that the movement is becoming more established although its emotional basis for mobilization may be changing.

The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in March 2019. Through a school strike, a new generation has been galvanized, representing a historical turn in climate activism. A team of social scientists from universities across Europe organized a survey of the global FFF strike events on March 15. The team surveyed protesters in 13 cities in nine European countries using the same research design to collect data, following the well-established protest survey methodology used previously in the “Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation” (CCC) project.

Environmental movements are in various ways shaped by their political context, typically conceptualized by scholars as the political opportunity structure (POS). In addition to presenting a review of research on the complex relationship between POS and environmental movements, this chapter provides an analysis of several emblematic climate mobilizations of the late 2010s to elaborate on some largely neglected aspects of POS theory. These include how movements translate POS into strategies through narratives of interactions with governmental institutions; how not only input structures but also output structures of governmental institutions need to be taken into account to understand environmental movements' strategic choices; and how POS may come to play a less significant role when movements shift from a predominantly instrumental logic to an increasingly moral/expressive logic.

The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in March 2019. Through a school strike, a new generation has been galvanized, representing a historical turn in climate activism. This wave of climate protest mobilization is unique in its tactics, global scope and appeal to teenage school students. Media coverage of these protests and high-level national and international political meetings involving the movement’s icon, Greta Thunberg, illustrate a level of global attention that no previous youth movement has ever received. A team of social scientists from universities across Europe1 organized a survey of the global FFF strike events on March 15. The team surveyed protesters in 13 cities in nine European countries using the same research design to collect data, following the well-established protest survey methodology used previously in the “Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation” (CCC) project.

This chapter concerns some methodological aspects of protest surveys and data analysis. We start by providing an overview of the demonstrations we surveyed, describe the protest survey sampling method and proceed to an analysis of non-response bias. Thereafter we discuss how we combine the data from different demonstrations into averages, and we also discuss some of the more technical aspects of coding.

The overall aim of this thesis is to advance our knowledge of the preconditions, processes, and consequences of the interaction between police and political protesters in contemporary Western democracies. Using qualitative analysis of interviews with police officers and political activists, activist Internet forum discussions, and documents produced by police and activists, along with direct observation of protest events and police training in policing tactics, the study seeks to capture the interplay between police and protesters as a continuous process, as opposed to a series of isolated incidents. A better understanding of the dynamics of this process is vital for facilitating vibrant, plural public spaces for deliberation and political representation in a democratic society. The four studies comprising this dissertation look at events and processes in Denmark and Sweden in 2001 through 2008 – a time period seeing a reform of policing tactics and an upsurge in protest activism in the two countries. Paper I analyses the communication between the police and activists, including explicit negotiations, both before and during the European Union summits in Gothenburg 2001 and Copenhagen 2002, examining in especial the protesters’ initial attitudes towards and subsequent evaluations of this communication. The analysis reveals that the possibilities for achieving sustainable agreements between the two parties were frequently constrained by a mutual lack of trust that made any commitments by the other party seem less than credible. Activists’ trust in the police was found to be heavily dependent on the recent history of police behaviour and something not easily influenced by the individual efforts of the negotiating officers. In addition, the different protest performances that various activist groups wanted to stage were found to be crucial in explaining their attitudes towards communication with the police. Paper II explores the way in which the Swedish police force works to improve its protest policing practices by trying to reform police knowledge through training and police officers’ individual interviews with activists and other counterparts. The discussion centres on the meanings that police officers confer on two organizing concepts framing the reform work – provocation and dialogue – and on the way in which police officers use “reality maintaining” strategies to comprehend activist perspectives without allowing these to fundamentally challenge their own points of view. It is suggested that the current policing style in Sweden, as used also in Denmark, is best conceptualized as proactive management of protests, which captures both the softer and harder aspects of this approach. Paper III draws upon Henri Lefebvre’s theory of production of space to explore how space is pro-duced through protests and protest policing, using a series of annual racist marches and counterdemonstrations as a case study. Conversely, the paper also considers certain key spatial aspects as explan-ations for how interactions between protesters and police unfolded in the cases concerned. It is argued that territorialization and deterritorialization affecting the boundaries of both physical spaces and the social order constituted the central spatial dimensions of this interaction. The case study, furthermore, illustrates how specific sites for protests can be used as ‘truth-spots‘ for movement claims. Paper IV explores how police provocation and subsequent violence by demonstrators are retroactively constructed in activist milieus in the aftermath of protests. Through an analysis of narratives about protest events as gleaned from interviews and Internet discussion forum discussions, the role of ‘provocation narratives’ in collective evaluation of protest tactics within activist milieus is examined. The analysis reveals how violence is accounted for by using distinct types of plot and particular characters to present the demonstrators as both victims and agents. Accounts of specific episodes of violence during demonstrations were found to theoretically bridge situational and cultural explanations of collective violence.