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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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The contentious politics of climate change

START YEAR 2022

END YEAR 2023

The project analyses political conflicts over climate change at local, national and transnational levels, looking at both institutional actors and civil society actors. It focuses on ways in which climate change is conceptualised in public debates, perceived by public opinion, and framed by political and social actors as well as how these definitions interact and change the classic structures of democracy and the political sphere. It pays attention to the ways in which climate change activism and policy is affected by the critical junctures of the COVI-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine and the subsequent energy and cost-of-living crises. The project also investigates the redefinition of environmental activism on the issue of climate change. Drawing on the large body of research on the features of environmentalist movements, it will focus on the roles and strategies of movements such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, but also at the ways (e.g. via ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ routes) in which these grassroots social movement networks contribute to a cultural and discursive shift in how environmental governance is framed in Europe. Attention is also paid to the tensions among forms of commitments, as well as with emerging contentions within movements and counter-mobilizations.

TEAM
Daniela Chironi
Eugene Nulman
Donatella della Porta
Guglielmo Meardi
Hans-Jorg Trenz

                                  

FUNDING

Scuola Normale Superiore

 

News

Publications

Edited Volume - 2026

Conspiracism and Political Conflict

Manuela Caiani, Marco Solinas, Hans-Jorg Trenz

Monograph - 2025

Free download for "Contentious Politics of Global Health Movements"

Donatella Della Porta, Stella Christou

Journal Article - 2025

Communication creates partial organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Marco Deseriis, Lorenzo Zamponi, Diego Ceccobelli
This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the climate action movement Fridays for Future, namely, the relationship between its mediated communication practices and its early organizational processes. Drawing from a strand of organizational communication that underscores the constitutive dimension of communication to organizing processes, we analyze the significance of mediatized leadership and networked communication for the foundation and early development of two national chapters of Fridays for Future: Youth for Climate (YFC) Belgium and Fridays for Future Italy (FFFI).

Journal Article - 2025

Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli