Mobilising environmentalists : A qualitative study of Swedish environmental social movements online

Sammanfattning: Many studies on social movements aim to understand a moment on an international level. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the Swedish environmental movement and the collective identity that can be found in these movements. In an effort to do this, the study aimed to answer research questions. The questions aimed at answering if collective identity is observable on social media, and to what degree, and how the collective identity online compares to what can be seen at a protest on the street. To answer these questions, the author took the help of two qualitative methods. The study looks at collective identity inobservable activities. The netnographic method has been used to gain insight into ten different Facebook pages that belong to seven separate Swedish environmental organisations. The ethnographic method of participant observation has been used to gain insight into six protests that took place in Stockholm, Sweden, during the spring semester of 2022. The results suggest that collective identity is visible online, to a high degree, because all aspects of collective identity are observable. Also, comparing the results between Facebook pages and street protests the visible collective identities did not differ, they just manifested in different ways.