Hope and Hopelessness in Youth Climate Activism: A Socio-Interactional Study of Young Activists´ Joint Decision-Making Regarding Upcoming Manifestations

This proposed socio-interactional research project seeks to investigate the intricate interplay between hope and hopelessness as manifested within the decision-making processes of young environmental activists in Sweden.

Through video recordings of planning meetings and interactional analysis, the project seeks to provide an in-depth and fine-grained account of how hopelessness can be transformed into hope through collective deontic authority.

The study uses the novel framework of social deontics and Conversation Analysis, which allows for a nuanced analysis of how activists interactionally recognize their capacity or incapacity to make demands for the future during group discussions where actions for environmental manifestations are jointly decided.

The expected results have the potential to provide crucial insights into the role of the opposite yet symmetrical concepts of hope and hopelessness and to contribute to research on emotions and collective action.

The project´s design involves making collections of all decision-making occurring in activists’ planning meetings, which will reveal interactional patterns, offering insights into what triggers emotional states of hopelessness to be transformed into action and hopeful expressions within the fateful context of youth environmental activism.