Consumer participation in environmental brand activism on Instagram: A case study of consumers use of hashtags in relation to Oatly's Swedish campaign Ditch Milk.

Sammanfattning: Environmental brand activism has become a strategy applied by many brands to engage and take a stand in the issue of climate change. The aim is to spur a debate and spark an interest and collective action among the consumers (Sarkar & Kotler, 2018). However, environmental brand activism has not created the same kind of engagement and debate as other forms of brand activism (Manfredi-Sánchez, 2019). This thesis looks at Oatly’s Swedish campaign Ditch Milk as an extreme case of environmental brand activism that can give insights into how consumers are making meaning of such a campaign. By analysing hashtags as an essential part of the development of online collective actions (Johnson et al., 2019), the aim is to identify how consumers are making meaning of environmental brand activism. In particular, on Instagram, a brand-related hashtag is often used in the same way across different accounts to create a relationship between a text and an image and an event such as an environmental activism campaign as Oatly’s (Zappavigna, 2018). The analysis shows how consumers tend to create posts with two different types of images where the hashtags are used to describe the image and connect and build a community outside of the post. Moreover, the analysis shows a type of self-branding style corresponding with earlier research on consumer activism. The consumers tend to favour lifestyle consumer activism making meaning of Oatly’s campaign as having values corresponding with their own personal values. The posts become a way to strengthen the self rather than spurring a debate.