Shaming “How-Dare-You” communication new climate activist trend?

In this first blog post from my side, I’m interested in taking a closer look at the language, communication, and rhetoric used by climate activists. I am interested in climate change communication – how the climate crisis is communicated by different actors in society and how it is received. I am especially fascinated by feelings and emotions connected to climate change communication. What kind of emotions does the sender intend to trigger at the receiver end and with hope for what action? Equally interesting is of course to understand how climate change communication is perceived by the receiver and what behavior changes it potentially leads to.

International development organizations have for quite some time worked with communication with the intent to trigger emotions such as pity, compassion, and sympathy. We are all familiar with donor-driven humanitarian aid communication illustrating starving children, women outside homemade tents, and young girls with big bellies as a result of child marriage. These explicit photos or videos of human suffering are often on social media accompanied by heart-breaking music and a voice-over calmly informing that YOU have the power to make a difference in these people’s lives.

This type of communication has for some time been heavily debated within the Communication for Development (C4D) field, where it has been criticized for its morality and lack of agency of the people on display and what actual change this communication can contribute to (McAnany, 2012). Even though the heart-breaking compassionated portraits appealing to pity still is commonly produced and used, some organizations such as UNICEF and UNHRC appear to actively move away from this type of communication and instead, in line with ideas and C4D theory and practice described by for example Tufte (2017) and Freire (2017), focus on dignified portraits, participation, and empowerment.

So why do I tell you about compassionated portraits from international development organizations when the focus of this blog is activist communication? Recently there appears to be a growing trend, in what could be called “how-dare-you” communication, from climate activists which stands in stark contrast to the compassionated portraits from international development organizations. Instead of appealing to pity, sympathy, and goodwill, this type of communication has the intent to do quite the opposite. With Greta Thunbergs’s famous “How Dare You”-speech as the trigger (?) and the inspiration for the name for the trend proposed here, more activists, especially in the climate movement, use communication where the feelings aimed at triggering appear to be shame, guilt, and humiliation. Of course, there has always been a noticeable difference in communication methods used by international development organizations and activists, where communication from the first one many times might be filtered by layers of bureaucracy, politics, and strategies, while the other is more unfiltered and louder. A difference that is further explored in Tufte’s (2017) chapter “Noisy Activism and Silent Communication Work?”.

Various forms of activist communication styles could be connected to the so-called “How Dare You” trend but the shaming factor is common for all of them. In Greta’s famous “How Dare You”-speech from the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York 2019, the shaming is clearly directed to target world leaders. The shaming is complemented with rhetoric which could be interpreted to also trigger guilt, with sentences such as “I shouldn’t be up here” and “you have stolen my childhood” (United Nations, 2019).

Other activists use more implicit communication styles to convey the same message. During 2022 climate activism took a new shape with several chases of art vandalism reported in different countries. In many cases, both the public and media appeared to have a hard time connecting the dots between what mashed potatoes thrown at expensive art had to do with the climate crisis, but when listening to what was actually being said by the climate activists there is a clear rationale and also shaming behind their strikes. The communication method used by the German-based climate activist group Last Generation, who was behind the strike in Museum Barberini in Potsdam where mashed potatoes were thrown at a Claude Monet painting, could be interpreted as implicit shaming. By connecting people’s affection for art with their loss of affection for what is happening with people and the planet as a consequence of the climate crisis, shame is created by highlighting the disproportionally irrelevant reaction of care towards material things when put in relation to real risks of danger for humans, the planet, and life. “How can you care about a painting on a piece of paper and not care about the destruction of our one common home” appeared to be the common logic and foundation for the shame of these strikes.