International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

Action with(out) activism: understanding digital climate change action

Jessica Emma McLean Sara Fuller
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To cite this document:
Jessica Emma McLean Sara Fuller , (2016),"Action with(out) activism: understanding digital climate change action",
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 36 Iss 9/10 pp. -
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 Action with(out) activism: Understanding digital climate change action

Introduction
Climate change activism is happening in multiple spaces, with individuals and groups
pursuing different strategies, ranging from more traditional organised praxis to relatively new
online engagement. Some academics and activists have critiqued digital activism as
ineffectual while others have celebrated it as part of the solution to inaction on pressing
issues such as climate change. In this article, we analyse a case of climate change action by
over ten thousand Australians that involved everyday online interventions which produced
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material changes, namely in the transformation of the Climate Commission. The Commission
was an institution that provided information about climate change impacts in the Australian
context, but in 2013 was defunded by a conservative national government. A crowdfunded
initiative transformed the Commission into the Climate Council and it is now an independent
institution.

Before it was defunded, the Commission focused on work that translated global-level climate
change science to the Australian context. The Commission, established in 2011, was led by
academics from the sciences, including biologists, environmental scientists and geologists,
and was oriented towards sharing knowledge about the serious and wide-ranging impacts of
climate change. Throughout its existence, the Commission worked apolitically to resist party-
related politics and to present the science of climate change impacts (Arup, 2013). The
conservative liberal government elected to the Federal level in 2013 came in to office with a
strong pro-industry, pro-coal mining agenda, somewhat conflicting with the Commission’s
goals to educate the public on climate change (McLean, 2015). The Abbott-led government
defunded the Commission on 19 September 2013 (Arup, 2013).

The activism that led to the creation of the Climate Council from the disestablishment of the
Climate Commission was spontaneous and based in online conversations. The discussions
that circulated on Twitter and Facebook in September 2013, when the Climate Commission
was defunded, prompted the biggest crowd-funding campaign in Australian history that
immediately supported the leaders of that organisation to keep doing their work to
communicate climate change impacts. More than 16,000 ‘Founding Friends’ helped the
Council raise $1.1 million in just over a week (Climate Council, 2014). Since its creation in
2013, the Climate Council has grown, both in terms of its followers and the breadth of its

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 action. On Facebook, nearly 150,000 people ‘Like’ the Council, while on Twitter the Council
has 23,000 followers (as of May 2016). The Council has commissioned research on climate
change science and increased media engagement, and from their own estimations, the
organisation reaches approximately 2.5 million people every month through their online
networks (Climate Council, 2014).

This paper draws out the empirical findings from a survey completed by individuals who
participated in the crowdfunding – the ‘Founding Friends’ – who were asked about their
motivations and interests in climate change action. Often, respondents identified the
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importance of maintaining an organisation that communicated information on climate change

while some advocated for better marketing of the benefits of climate change action. Overall,
most respondents did not express an affiliation with activist praxis and yet their actions
produced a political intervention that resisted national government intentions. We read this
case as an example of action without conscious activism, a variant on organising without
organisation (Earl and Kimport, 2011), where climate change action in digital spaces captures
the relational dynamics inherent to those spaces and networks to other offline domains. This
article offers a conceptualisation of action without conscious activism to explain the inherent
tensions presented in this example of digital climate action. While supporters of the Climate
Council are keen to do something about climate change, they often do not perceive their
behaviours as existing within activist tropes. The power of online action, in all its
contradictory guises, should not, then, be overlooked in considering the range of possibilities
available to those interested in effecting meaningful change.

Action and activism in the climate change arena

There are multiple arenas within which climate change activism and protest can take place.
This section first explores the ‘traditional’ physical spaces of climate change activism and
protest, before considering the opportunities and challenges of online/digital spaces as loci
for climate change activism.

‘Organised’ spaces of climate change activism

Climate activism is now a large and globally diverse array of movements, most recently
evidenced by the Global Climate March in November 2015 ahead of the COP21 Paris
conference where more than 2,300 marches were scheduled around the world in more than
175 countries involving over 785000 people (350.org, 2015). Despite this, there has been

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 longstanding debates within the climate movement about the orientation, strategy and
development of the movement, which reveal “tensions and conflicts” (Dietz, 2014: 303).

Theoretical perspectives on climate action have sought to understand how mobilisation

occurs within complex, multi-level governance systems (Bomberg, 2012, Hadden, 2014) as
well as exploring spaces and scales of climate action (North, 2011, Roser-Renouf et al.,
2014). For example, drawing on analysis of the UK North (2011:1582) notes that climate
activism is “wide ranging and diffuse” and that it embraces a range of protest techniques. He
identifies multiple forms of activism, including “prefigurative activism”, such as Transition
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Initiatives, “outward-focused activism” which includes the lobbying activities of NGOs and
“direct action” such as climate camps.

Similar diversity is found in the Australian context. Hans (2014) identifies two broad ‘layers’
of the Australian climate movement, termed as ‘mainstream civil society’ (including the
Southern Cross Climate Coalition, environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and Friends of
the Earth and State Nature Conservation Councils) and ‘grassroots climate movement’
(composed of organisations such as regional climate action networks, local climate action
groups and student environmental groups). While organisations within mainstream civil
society have access to mainstream media and have opportunities to engage with parliaments
and local councils, the grassroots climate movement in contrast largely operates “below the
radar of mainstream media” (Hans, 2014: 154) and engages in activities such as conferences,
rallies, climate camps and lobbying politicians. Trust in civil society and its capacity to work
for the common good is found in other environmental movement research, for example in
Belotti’s (2015) analysis of a diffuse social movement producing and sustaining resistance to
water privatisation in Italy.

Moving beyond the strategies of collective action, there is also a body of literature that seeks
to explore the role of the individual in the context of climate change activism. Much of the
literature that considers the role of the individual in the context of climate change focuses on
pro-environmental behaviour, including the adoption of new technologies and the
connections between attitudes, behaviours and choices. These approaches are rooted in an
ongoing process of ‘individualisation’ where the focus is on individual action and practices
(Paterson and Stripple, 2010). While these practices may not always be conceptualised as

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 ‘activism’, they are significant because they highlight that there are spaces beyond collective
arenas where action on climate change may take place.

Research indicates, however, that any distinction between activism and being an activist is
often complex. Bobel (2007) for example, identifies a tension between ‘doing activism’ and
‘being activist’ and Chatterton and Pickerill (2010) find that people are keen to ‘do’ activism
without self-identifying as activists. Furthermore, if we seek to understand the everyday
nature of such practices, we must therefore understand that they may not be linear or rational.
Building on a wide body of geographical literature that seeks to explore the everyday lives of
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activists, Chatterton and Pickerill (2010) find that “messy, everyday practices” fundamentally
define such projects where participants attempt to build the future in the present.

In summary, we see the emergence of multiple spaces for action around climate change, both
collective and individual, and mobilizing around a diversity of priorities. We argue that this
raises significant questions about what it means to be a ‘climate activist’ in this multiplicity
of spaces, where consistent expressions of action with(out) activism emerge. We also see that
beyond and in addition to more traditional forms of organised resistance, there exists the
potential for important diverse and spontaneous forms of everyday activism – consistent with
a more horizontal and anarchistic praxis of self-organisation. One such arena here is digital
spaces, which is where the paper now turns.

The emergence and implications of climate activism in digital spaces

Online activism is often critiqued as ineffectual or symbolic rather than substantive and the
reasoning behind such assignation partly comes from the digital dualism that pervades
frequent conceptualisations of online and offline spaces. Kinsley (2014: 364) states that it ‘is
not uncommon to hear an opposition set up between “the virtual” and “the real”, or “the
physical”. The opposition between offline and online spaces, that propagates a digital
dualism, is reflected in the use of acronyms like IRL (in real life) and references to the
immaterial and online space. Like Kinsley, Jurgenson (2012) argues that the binaries that
circulate in common framings of digital spaces can lead to disconnected thinking about the
practices that happen there, and misrepresent interconnections and interrelations between
different spaces.

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 McLean (2016) continues unpacking the ramifications of digital dualism by drawing on
Massumi’s (1987) notion of the more-than-real. Massumi (1987) queries the qualities of the
simulacrum – the more-than-real – in this way: ‘simulation is a process that produces the real,
or, more precisely, more real (a more-than-real) on the basis of the real.’ (Massumi, 1987:
92). McLean (2016) proposes that we use the more-than-real notion to understand digital
spaces and invert the diminution that accompanies thinking about the digital as not real. The
more-than-real, synonymous with digital spaces, can produce productive or corrosive
excesses: supporting social movements like the Arab Spring or the Occupy Movement
(Gerbaudo and Treré, 2015) and also enabling terrorist networks to grow and recruit new
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members (Ferrara, 2015). Situating this instance of institutional change within the broader
landscape of online activism requires considering what contribution a mainstream climate
change action can give to understanding dynamics of digital spaces.

In 2012, a review of the literature on online climate change activism showed significant gaps
in research on the impacts of online communication with respect to climate change
knowledge, emotion and behaviours (Schafer, 2012). Schafer (2012) also critiques the focus
on European and United States examples and this article plays a role in both addressing
questions of the intangible and tangible impacts of online climate change communication and
increasing the geographic diversity of the research field. Research on the potentials of online
activism on climate change has also shown a tendency towards reformist action rather than
radical interventions (Uldam, 2013). The possibility of meaningful impact is limited, Uldam
(2013) argues, if activists use standard tools such as online petitions when working online.
Uldam (2012) examined climate change action within Durban asking for climate justice
during an international climate change negotiation, while this article demonstrates a novel
intervention within a mainstream governance context on climate change issues at a national
scale. These contextual differences no doubt contribute to the contrasting findings between
this article and Uldam’s research but we also have a conceptual interest in considering the
relationship between action and organised activism.

The potential for digital action to produce new spaces of exclusion has been considered by
van Laer (2010) in research on the interactions of online and offline activism within Belgium.
That research showed that the internet produced ‘superactivists’ who were highly educated
and strategic, producing greater participation inequalities than before online activism was
available as an option. Van Laer (2010) found that a duality emerged in their research of 9

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 protests in Belgium where activists who reported using online activist spaces were younger,
better educated and were highly interested in politics, while those who did not do online
activism tended to be the opposite. Whether these demographic issues present problems in
terms of action in the context of online climate activism is not clear: later in this article we
will unpack how action without conscious activism seems to contain contradictions and
tensions within this diffuse social movement for climate action. Further research, including
interviews of Climate Council supporters, is required to establish deeper insights into the
relationships between online and offline climate actions.
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With(out) organisation – organic, spontaneous networks

Sociological studies of social movements have offered models and theories for how and why
people organise around particular issues. For instance, Stern et al (1999) offer a value-belief-
norm theory to explain why individuals support social movements, separating activist from
non-activist behaviours. Stern et al (1999: 91) suggest that non-activist behaviours include
‘consumer behaviour, environmental citizenship, and policy support or acceptance’. While
we see merit in the construction of this framework within traditional environmental social
movements, the qualitatively different context of social movements in the current contexts
invites analysis that resists such binary thinking. Digital spaces allow for less structured
engagements and for individuals to connect with diffuse social movements that produce
change, despite nebulous organisation. More recently, Bennett and Segerberg (2012) propose
that social movements work partly as a result of the connection and expression of personal
politics with broader scale social concerns. Connective action has become the dominant
paradigm for understanding online action but this notion has also received critique in novel
contexts. Maddox et al (2016) analyse the Silk Road, a ‘dark space’ of the Internet no longer
in operation, where people once bought and sold drugs. By performing digital ethnography
within this space and interviewing several Silk Road users, Maddox et al (2016) developed a
reading of the behaviours and social engagement therein as a permissive space. Rather than
connective action, Maddox et al (2016) theorise social dynamics of the Silk Road as having a
constructive activism that was built upon radical politics visible only to its users. Maddox et
al’s (2016) notion of constructive activism is distinct to our notion of ‘action with(out)
activism’ because of the scale and visibility of the action that we analyse in this case study.

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 The everyday activism that constitutes the practices facilitating the Climate Council’s
creation reflects processes in other instances of activist interventions with limited
organisation. Organic, unprompted social interventions have been widely investigated in the
literature on the role of social media in processes of change, and are emerging on literature
about the processes through which activist groups are created (for example see Kavada
(2015), Howard and Hussain (2013) and McLean and Maalsen (2013)). Social media is one
of the many tools that propelled the Arab Spring (Howard and Hussain, 2013). In their book
that queries whether we are experiencing democracy’s fourth wave as a result of digital
engagement, Howard and Hussain (2014:47) argue that social media has ‘the power to put a
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human face on political oppression’. Gerbaudo and Treré (2015) argue that the collective
identity building that happens in social media has been largely overlooked, offering their
special issue as a contribution to filling that gap.

In another context, Kavada (2015) investigates how Occupy movement activists forged a
collective identity through communication practices in the United Kingdom and the United
States of America by looking at their social media presence. The Occupy Movement was
universally critical of neoliberal capitalism and the perceived injustices that it produces, but
was distinct in geographically differentiated locations. An overarching commonality between
different sites and clusters of the Occupy Movement was that they refused to appoint leaders
and a collective voice on social media emerged, with explicit articulation of inclusive
language for all Occupiers, whether they were participating on social media or were ‘core
Occupiers’ (Kavada, 2015: 884). At the same time, conflicts over administrative access rights
occurred. Kavada (2015) argues that despite structural aspects of social media platforms
partially threatening the cohesion of the Occupy Movement, these digital tools allowed the
growth of a collective that was mostly inclusive and effective.

Similar paradoxes were observed by McLean and Maalsen (2013) in the dynamics of Destroy
the Joint’s creation and continuation. Destroy the Joint (DTJ) emerged as a popular hashtag
(#destroythejoint) that lampooned sexist comments made by a conservative radio host and
politician. That hashtag then grew to become a diverse and unified, but not uniform, social
media reliant institution, that campaigns on multiple issues. Those campaigns range from
opposing supposedly comedic debates about rape culture to highlighting gender- and family-
based violence. Similarly to the Occupy Movement, DTJ has a flat structure with unnamed
moderators controlling Facebook and Twitter content and attracting public critique (McLean

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 and Maalsen, 2013). The structures and social media that exists behind – and enable – the
Occupy Movement and DTJ may reflect the ‘organizing without organizations’ (Earl and
Kimport, 2011: 108) that is characteristic of digital spaces that facilitate social change.

Emotion is playing an important role in driving activism in digital spaces, as the

commingling of political issues and intimate online spaces is creating issue publics (Kim,
2012). These issue publics operate as hybrid entities: people bring their personal experiences
and values to bear on public concerns. The notion of issue publics connects to the ‘doing’ of
activism that Chatterton and Pickerill (2010) consider in their paper. Building and extending
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on these ideas around what it means to do activism in new ways, Bennett and Segerberg
(2013, 2012) describe the logic of connective action, where personal politics play a role in the
effectiveness of social movements that are building from and within digital spaces. Partially
propelling digital activism is the emotional responses to challenging events and how
individuals bring these positionings to the issues that they follow, including how they engage
online and offline.

The ‘emotional turn’ in the social sciences (Anderson and Smith, 2001) has prompted
attention to how emotions and affect operate in social processes and we draw on some of
these insights for this article. For instance, Jackson and Valentine (2014) draw on analysis of
emotions in considering the democratic potential of digital spaces, particularly analysing
comments sections on commentary pieces about abortion and women’s access to
reproduction control in the United Kingdom. Jackson and Valentine (2014) foreground
consideration of the way emotions guide and inflect debate in ways that observers may not
consider as ‘rational’ but are, nevertheless, powerful. Desire is a force that taps into
emotional expression and certainly has a role to play in understanding online activism, and
whether online action can produce substantive change. As Deleuze and Guattari state:

‘If desire produces, its product is real. If desire is productive, it can be productive only
in the real world and can produce only reality’ (Deleuze and Guattari, [1984] 2004:
28)

Following Deleuze and Guattari, and reconnecting with the more-than-real notion, social
media is partly driven by emotional geographies that play a role in motivating everyday
action on climate change. Overall, the literature shows that messy, everyday actions are

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 growing in relation to climate change interventions and that multiplicity characterises much
of that action. In delineating the issues identified in the work to date on activism and social
media engagement, we can begin to see a sort of action without conscious activism emerging
in digital actions.

Methods
As previously noted, the Climate Council was established in the wake of the disbanding of
the Climate Commission in 2013. Within a short period of time after the establishment of the
climate council, the organization had several thousand ‘Founding Friends’, as a result of a
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widespread social media campaign. This paper reports on a survey that was undertaken by the
Climate Council with their Founding Friends that sought to understand their motivations for
supporting the renewed institution.

The survey was distributed by email and received over 10,000 responses, with an equal split
between male and female respondents and a range of ages 18-25 (5%); 25-35 (17%); 35-45
(19%); 45-55 (21%); 55-65 (23%); 65+ (15%). The survey data was provided to us in full,
via individual responses recorded in an Excel spreadsheet with only personal details (names
and addresses) removed. As we had access to the full survey data, the lack of such personal
details did not constrain the analysis. Ethics approval was granted through Macquarie
University’s Human Research Ethics Committee to use the anonymised data.

For the purposes of this paper we have drawn on four questions from the survey – both
quantitative and qualitative (open-ended) questions. In the selected questions (detailed
below), we consider general trends from the quantitative data and draw on a random sample
of 100 responses for each of the open-ended questions. The sample size of 100 responses was
appropriate as it facilitated in-depth interrogation of the rich empirical data while also
allowing us to draw out some general themes and trends. While this sample is not intended to
be representative or statistically significant, it nonetheless serves as a productive starting
point for an analysis of this nature. For the sample of 100 responses, the data was analysed
using established qualitative techniques of coding and organising data thematically. The
qualitative findings below are illustrated using quotations that are representative of each of
the themes identified as part of the coding process.

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 Findings and discussion
This section identifies two key themes: first, reflections on the institutional space of the
Climate Council in terms of the action undertaken and secondly, on the actions/activism
undertaken by individuals and their engagement with the Climate Council. Findings and
discussion are interwoven here as the empirics drive the research that this article presents.
Further, given the number of respondents, we have chosen to emphasise the richness of that
data and respect the voices of participants.

Institutional action: what should the Climate Council do?

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The Climate Council distributed the survey closely following the transformation of its
institutional funding, from public to private, and hoped to gauge the climate change-related
priorities of those that contributed to its formation. Within this section we consider the
following two questions from the survey:

• How important do you think these activities will be for the climate council to do?
• Do you have any other suggestions for activities that the climate council should do?

Survey participants were invited to identify what activities would be of most importance for
the Climate Council to perform in the future, ranging from briefing journalists to providing
reports on climate change. Figure 1 shows the range of responses provided by the 8,807
participants.

[INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE]

Figure 1: Importance of Climate Council activities

The second question in this section ‘Do you have any other suggestions for activities that the
climate council should do?’ elicited a broad range of responses; from affirming the work of
the Climate Council, to suggesting an expansion of its network and focus, respondents gave a
multitude of recommendations and comments on this open-ended question about future
Council action. We draw on a sample of 100 responses.

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 Respondents’ most frequent suggestion for the Council was for the organisation to focus on
communicating climate change science in accessible language and to provide Australians
with information about current and future climate change impacts. The consistency of this
recommendation with the practices that had formed the bulk of the Climate Commission’s
work prior to its transformation speaks somewhat to the success of the organisation. It may
also reflect the fact that all respondents to the survey are already strong supporters of the
institution, as manifest in respondents’ pecuniary contributions to the Council’s creation and
continuation. Respondents commended the Council on its work to date and encouraged it to
keep going. One suggested that feedback from non-experts was not necessary:
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‘I wouldn't ask for too much guidance from lay people. Yes, we have some minor
buy-in. But we're not qualified to guide your work. Look to your colleagues in
sensible, proactive places (like Germany) and take the lead from them.’

This participant invoked an international comparison while simultaneously endorsing the

Climate Council’s work. Several other respondents advocated tapping into global networks
and drawing on examples of efforts by other nations suggesting that the Council replicate
and/or learn from the way that more pro-active nations and networks are addressing climate
change risks. For example, one respondent advised the Council to ‘Engage with similar
institutions globally so information can be shared.’ The linking of a global problem to global
solutions, and also with multiply-scaled action, was a common theme in the respondents’
recommendations for the Council. One respondent cited the importance of building a global
movement, advocating renewable energy and drawing on international examples in his/her
response:

‘My 10 yr old daughter thinks that the success that some other countries are having in
using more sustainable energy solutions should be highlighted - we should be part of a
global movement - data could be published on the success or lack thereof of other
countries to meet targets - in other words what is working and what is not when it
comes to emissions. Such little of this data is reported without bias.’

The emphasis on future generations is carried through in respondents’ repeated mentions of

the need to provide school education programs and opportunities. A quote that captures this
theme follows:

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 ‘Work on educational materials and short videos that can be used in the classroom by
teachers in schools. Get the message to young people. Work with local communities
and Municipal councils to get action at a grass roots level. Work in areas where there
are coal power stations to change opinion about how these industries are polluters so
these communities accept change and new forms of employment. Provide accessible
information on renewable energy and how it can work.’

The above quote reverberates with previous responses that argue for broader uptake of
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renewable energy as a viable way forward. However, people who do have close interaction
with students and young people argue that this group is better informed than others, as shown
here:

As a volunteer with a youth organisation, I can see that the youth of today do place
importance on the environment more than the majority of adults do. They are
being taught it in schools. But it will be too late to wait until they are running the
country. I personally think more pressure is needed on the government, federally as
well as state, and the general voting public need to be leading the push. The climate
change movement has to find a way to beat the apathy of mainstream society, to find
a way to make it matter, to create an urgency, when for many it doesn't interfere with
their day to day lives so they don't care.’ (emphasis ours)

Students, according to this respondent who spends regular time with them, should not be the
target for communicating climate change action requirements, rather the general public
should be the focus.

Respondents clearly understood the complexities surrounding climate change action,

advocating a multi-scalar approach for the Council. One respondent state that the ‘micro-
level’, the individual, should be targeted and another asked the Council to begin ‘helping us
set up local groups of concerned citizens, to network and reach our community.’

There were two general clusters of responses to the question of what the Climate Council
should do in future action. The first looked to communication and community action to
encourage decisive movement on climate change, while the second advocated a marketing

12
 and media-driven approach that co-opts public personas and/or sells a counter-message to the
skeptics that have previously attracted significant attention in the Australian media
(Macintosh, 2008) and still do get disproportionate media time (Tranter, 2011, Young and
Coutinho, 2013). This group tended to emphasise that powerful, and perhaps dramatic action
is needed: ‘You DESPERATELY need a plan to combat the public "climate fatigue" and the
political "climate dismissal". We are losing!!!’; ‘I'm not sure about your financial situation in
the long term (I wish I could give you millions!) but now being an independent body may be
a real blessing in disguise. Got get 'em!!’, and; ‘Go on the offensive’. Clear emotional
evocations – evident in the extra exclamation marks, capitalization and the suggestion to
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move forward aggressively – are tied up in these respondents’ suggestions.

The role of emotion in building community action and positive involvement is reflected in
how respondents answered the question about future Council action.

‘If people always hear the 'doom and gloom' about climate change they're likely to
tune out. By promoting the positive side to climate change action, for example
showing people the benefits of engaging in community activities that reduce their
carbon footprint, we might have a better chance at reaching out to more people.’

The literature shows that scare campaigns that build upon peoples’ fear of disastrous
environmental change are less likely to succeed, at least in getting participants engaged with
action for environmental change (O'Neill and Nicholson-Cole, 2009).

The sophistication of some responses indicates a cohort of highly informed, reflexive

thinkers. For example:

‘We need a permanent non-governmental co-operative body to plan the transition to a

sustainable economy. It would need to incorporate views from all business and social
groupings to be able to persuade us to accept the sacrifices that turn out to be
unavoidable, and wherever possible to spread the burden evenly. It would need to
keep the long view in focus - a task that is too difficult for an elected government. I
hope there are people out there who know how such a body might be set up and
managed.’

13
 Transitioning to a sustainable economy, achieved through an independent institution, is a
complex suggestion that recognises the challenges associated with this movement: the
respondent uses the words ‘sacrifices’ and ‘burden’.

Last, and similar to the preceding quote about economic transition, the respondents frequently
queried the fundamental role of the Climate Council. The opportunity to redefine the work
that the Council does emerged as a strong theme. Recommendations were prefaced with
comments like ‘This might not be a brief for the Climate Council’ and ‘How pro-active is the
Council’s role?’.
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Individual action and engagement with the Climate Council

While it is important to understand supporters’ priorities for action that should be undertaken
by the Climate Council, it is equally significant to understand the motivations for action that
resulted in the success in the crowdfunding initiative. Within this section we therefore
consider two further questions from the survey:

• Why do you support the Climate Council?

• What activities would you be interested in participating in?

From 8246 open ended responses to the question of ‘Why do you support the Climate
Council’, a random sample of 100 responses was taken. Three key reasons for supporting the
Climate Council emerged, as follows: independent science communication; government and
politics; and citizenship and responsibility.

Consistent with the aims of the organisation, the need for science communication to the
general public was seen to be paramount in terms of influencing action and one of the key
reasons why people supported the establishment of the Climate Council. As one respondent
noted:

“My hope is that the courageous people who went out on a limb to establish the
Climate Council will be able to communicate the realities to all Australians.

14
 Hopefully, Australia will refocus on the priorities, and develop and implement
effective policies that give us the best chance to minimise harm in the future”.

What was interesting in this context was that ‘action’ was perceived in a variety of forms.
Some talked of acts that they, as individuals, could take, reminiscent of the individualisation
of climate action considered by Paterson and Stripple (2010). The majority of respondents
however, similar to the example above, identified government policy as one key arena for
action and talked of making “the community demand more of politicians”. Others identified
that being ‘outside’ of government had the potential to make the Climate Council more
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effective as an organisation in terms of influencing government policy than had previously

been the case:

“We need new ways to communicate with people and organisations that are still in
denial and to win their hearts and minds. Most importantly we need real solutions to
slow/reverse/minimize the change and to deal with the consequences of a changing
climate. I think the Climate Council can be more effective without the restrictions that
may come with Government funding. It’s time to get this issue back on the agenda of
all levels of Government and business”

Not only was the Climate Council seen as potentially more effective in its independent form,
there was a clear call for the organisation to act as a vehicle for democracy – perhaps in the
same way as ‘physical’ climate gatherings have aimed to do. As one respondent wrote:

“This is our chance to show that there is no stupid mandate, climate change is real
many people want our government to take action for change. This new Climate
Council can show any government the precise model of action we want”.

In this context of communication and action, respondents argued that the independent nature
of the Climate Council was a key reason why the organisation had gained their support, as
evident here:

“I support the Climate Council because it is the last independent group in Australia
that researches, understands and can communicate to Australians”

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 There was a clear connection being drawn between the perceived independence and
impartiality of the Climate Council, and the fact that this independence was not present in
other sectors of Australia, particularly government or industry. As one respondent noted:

“It is important there is an independent scientific body that can provide factual
information without untainted by government bias or industrial influence”

In this vein, respondents talked of a need for “independent scientists in the age of dinosaur
politics” alongside a need to “present valid information to the population so that they can
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make decisions informed on sounds scientific evidence rather than the ‘propaganda’”. There
was thus a clear perception that any form of climate action – whether individual or collective
– should be firmly based on independent science and should attempt to overcome perceived
biases within other sectors of Australia. Again, a resonance with action but no conscious
activism emerges in this set of perspectives.

On the matter of sharing climate change science, one particularly common thread was that
many participants recognised the need to overcome a perceived media bias, reflected in what
respondents also want the Climate Council to do next. Respondents noted the challenge of
overcoming “misinformation” and “poor quality information available through mainstream
media channels” and “the fact that journalists let politicians say whatever they want without
challenging them”. As one respondent clearly articulated:

“Without strong, clear, independent expert advice and advocacy, founded on a strong,
evidence-based scientific platform, we, the ‘common people’ haven't a hope of our
opinions and views being represented, or of our voice being heard over the dominant
voice of the rich few who own the media and who continue to plunder our country's
resources for their own personal gain and who don't give a damn about the
consequences for everyone else”

This concern for independence was strongly underpinned by the recognised lack of support
from the (then) Abbott government for the issue of climate change and the short term nature
of the political process. As noted by one respondent:

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 “The current governments (federal and state) either do not believe in climate change
or do not consider it important enough, so there needs to be a creditable voice on
climate change”

Respondents identified that their reasons for supporting the Climate Council were based on
the perceptions that “Abbott has got it very wrong on this issue”, that “the present
government is delusional, uninformed and negligent in these matters” and that there was
“concern for insufficient action to date due to confusion and denial”. As noted above, while
many felt that the Climate Council could be more effective in terms of influencing policy
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from ‘outside’ government, there was also a widespread perception that the Climate Council
was stepping into a space that should be occupied by the government, as one respondent
noted:

“The new government is a disaster ignoring a situation that is vital to our future
existence on this planet. That a group of qualified highly motivated and concerned
citizens have put their hands up to do what the government fails to do is a miracle and
earns my respect and support”

Not only was there concern about the lack of government support for the issue of climate
change, there was concern about the short-sighted nature of the political process: “I despair
that the elected politicians are childish and short-sighted. You give me hope that there are
some sensible wise people in this country”. Some respondents identified that there was a
resulting need to create alternative spaces for action. As one respondent argued:

“This problem is so big and so urgent and our government so short-sighted it is

crucial we mobilise in every other way we can worldwide to tackle it”

Finally, there were several respondents who reflected on their personal motivations for
supporting the Climate Council broadly related to citizenship and responsibility. These
personal motivations included concerns for family and the next generation: environmental
concerns for the future of the planet, alongside acts of citizenship and responsibility. Such
motivations accord with a desire to intervene actively but not express an affinity with
activism. This was succinctly argued by one respondent:

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 “The cost of inaction will be too great to bear. The planet will be fine and recover
once we are gone. We will make it uninhabitable for people in the next hundred years
if we continue on our present course. I'd like to be able to look my little girl in the eye
and say that I didn't stand by and watch and not act”

Many respondents drew out these emotional connections with family and future generations
as being a motivation for action with responses such as “I want to secure the future for both
me and my children”, “I am concerned about the world that my grandchildren will inherit
from us” and “It’s the right thing to do for my children's future”. Such emotional statements
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reflect the role that desire plays in the motivations of people participating in social change
within the more-than-real. It also presents an alternative perspective to literature (e.g.
Whitmarsh et al., 2011) that suggests a lack of emotional engagement with the issue of
climate change.

Others talked more broadly about the future of the planet with statements such as “I am
concerned about the unsustainable way the earth is being used and I want to help change it”,
while others talked of their fears and worries:

“I am very worried about the future. Frightened I suppose. Will do all I can to help.
Because I believe there are imperatives - of time (we are running out of time to take
action) and of conscience (we must care for others now and in future)”.

These emotional responses were not entirely without political motive, however. Many felt
that the lack of government action was actually their ‘spur’ to action, as noted here:

“I believe the science behind climate change indicates that if no action is taken future
generations will suffer significantly. This coupled with a government that is actually
going the opposite direction has driven me to action”.

Some respondents did explicitly position themselves as protesting against the government
decision: “A way to protest against the shutdown of old climate council”. However, others
positioned their support for the Climate Council more broadly as an act of citizenship:

18
 “To not assist the Climate Council and other climate focused organisations would be
failing in my responsibility as a citizen to demand genuine action on climate change”.

“It’s essential for our future - we need research and monitoring, we need the
education and awareness. If our government will not do it, the people need to”

It is in such statements that there is a clear move away from a desire for government led
action towards grassroots action – both individual and collective. As the respondent noted
above, the people need to act if the government will not. This seems to position the Climate
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Council in a space whereby they can support prefigurative action around change. Moreover,
it concurs with Bobel’s (2007) assertion that one can ‘do activism’ without ‘being activist’ in
as much as an act of citizenship may not directly equate with an act of activism.

Moving on to the second question in this section, and in relation to involvement in future
activities, the majority of survey respondents stated that they would like to be involved in
future Climate Council activities (6,537 out of 10,166 respondents). As seen in Figure 2, they
stated that they would be interested in doing the following activities.

[INSERT FIGURE 2 HERE]

Figure 2: Respondents’ interest in participation with the Climate Council

Online involvement is by far the most popular option for people to contribute further to the
work of the Climate Council (74%) but offline options are also nominated as areas for
engagement. It is not surprising that most respondents are interested in sharing information
on social media as the reformation of the Council occurred largely thanks to action in that
space (McLean, 2016). Further, when examining what sorts of activities the Council should
pursue in the future, the communication of climate change science and promotion of
community action is the most commonly mentioned area (see Figure 2). Sharing information
on social media feeds is compatible with supporters’ interest in maintaining an institution that
communicates climate change impacts.

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 Action without conscious activism? Reflections and conclusion

This paper has reflected on the emergence of digital spaces as loci for action on climate
change that we argue raises significant questions about what it means to be a ‘climate
activist’. We have reflected on the creation of the Climate Council in Australia as a
mechanism to examine the motivation of the Climate Council’s supporters to gain a better
understanding of mainstream, organised climate change action and how this might intersect
with more diverse and ‘everyday’ forms of activism. Rather than theorising these
interventions as forms of ‘constructive activism’ (Maddox et al, 2016) or ‘connective action’
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(Bennett and Segerberg, 2012), we have conceptualised this case of climate change
intervention as action with(out) conscious activism. The diffuse, spontaneous and yet
powerful effects of collective support for the Climate Council with an absence of universal
resistance affect leads us to this interpretation. Action with(out) conscious activism can be
articulated then as a hybrid of connective action and constructive activism as it captures
transformative action that works simultaneously with an arms-length attitude to activism.

The interests and passions of Climate Council supporters presented in this article have shown
how a prominent, mainstream climate change action has occurred through concerted action
but with simultaneous distancing of activism. Emotional investment in the current and
predicted impacts of climate change drove much of this activism, prompting a consideration
of the way desire works in digital spaces. The more-than-real has allowed a spontaneous and
organic reformation of an institution that Abbott’s conservative government abolished.
However, digital dualisms serve to continue to undermine serious consideration of such
action. Furthermore, the seemingly paradoxical nature of this action in digital spaces may
obfuscate the power of these processes. The empirics presented here show that individuals
were often happy to commit to communicating about climate change impacts but did not
want to pursue rigorous activism. At the same time, these supporters also contributed to a
political reconfiguration of an institution from government-funded to an independent crowd-
funded institution.

We argued at the beginning of this article that diverse climate action characterises much of
how people are ‘doing’ something about this global environmental process, and that
messiness is a part of citizen interventions on climate change (Chatterton and Pickerill,
2010). However, the way that social media allows affiliated connections to proliferate and

20
 produce substantive organisations without organisation (Earl and Kimport, 2011) combined
with connections to issue publics (Kim, 2012, McLean and Maalsen, 2013), may mean the
ordinariness of small actions such as tweets/retweets and donations to a defunded
organisation is overlooked.

While this case study does not provide an absolute answer to the question of the power of
online activism in relation to climate change, it does provide some valuable insights as to the
motivations of those who play a role in making the messiness of action without conscious
activism. The legitimation of action within social media is perceptible in this case where
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resistance of unilateral decision-making has produced a digitally-driven shift. The almost

anarchistic qualities of this issue public are remarkable and surprising when we consider that
the focus of the Climate Council supporters is on communicating information.

We suggest that further research is needed to further interrogate the opportunities for climate
action that are offered by digital spaces. This paper has specifically focused on one example
of climate activism which occurred through an opportunity that arose suddenly, afforded by
an institutional restructure at the federal government level. This represents one arena for
online activism but co-exists alongside multiple other organisations and activist spaces. There
is scope therefore to compare this specific instance of spontaneous climate activism with
other more established activist spaces – in the environmental field and beyond – to consider
differences and synergies and draw out broader implications for what it means to be a climate
activist. Such an analysis would also offer opportunities for a broader consideration of the
role of online climate activism in democratic politics – echoing Jackson and Valentine (2014)
who highlight that such spaces offer opportunities but are also limited in their capacity to
fully capture issues of care and responsibility.

If policymakers were to glean any insights from this article, they might see that climate
change action in Australia is, in part at least, being undertaken by those who seek a
sustainable, just future and a better informed general population. These individuals
networked informally, out of dissatisfaction with a national governance decision, and
materially provided an alternative to dissolution of a climate change communication
institution. The scale and everydayness of their actions shows how micro-efforts do form
macro-changes and that action without activism can effect dramatic transformations. In
conclusion therefore, this article supports literature on the diversity of the climate movement

21
 that operates with a degree of disorganisation yet also suggests a common ground for
mobilisation by digital spaces that otherwise would not have been possible.
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