New Publication on the Normative Challenge posed by Fridays for Future

Meeting the Paris Agreement will require unprecedented social change that goes hand in hand with technological and economic innovations. Research suggests that normative change, the change in what is perceived as normal or morally acceptable, can drive wider large-scale social change, i.e., change in legislation, policy, and behaviour. Normative change often starts with a normative challenge, i.e., practices considered normal, come to be seen as morally repugnant. In this paper Dr Viktoria Spaiser, Dr Nicole Nisbett and Dr Cristina Stefan explore the normative challenge posed by Fridays for Future, analysing computationally a large data set of tweets in the context of this protest movement to understand the normative framework that challenges business as usual.

Spaiser V, Nisbett N, Stefan CG (2022) “How dare you?”—The normative challenge posed by Fridays for Future. PLOS Clim 1(10): e0000053. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000053