The Blueprints to Our Climate Future Are in Their Hands: A Metamodernist Analysis of Lebanese Youth Activism on Instagram

Abstract

The most salient issue facing climate action today is how to communicate it. That is, “narrative” plays an overlooked, yet integral role in orienting our collective mindset to approach the climate crisis. The power that communication bears in spurring climate action is perhaps best exhibited by today’s youth climate activists, who, I argue, have developed a new, distinct climate Grand Narrative. To investigate the themes of this narrative, I propose a novel conceptual framework, Youth Climate Metamodernism (YCM). In utilizing the metamodernist Grand Narrative as a theoretical framework, YCM overarchingly characterizes how youth climate activists communicate climate education and promote stakeholder action. I break this narrative framework down into three central themes: Youth Grassroots-ism, the Cult of Infographic-ism, and Transmovement-ism. These themes focus on how today’s activists have discursively initiated a movement focused on future generations, disseminated in a verbally and visually accessible manner, and assembled by and for voices from diverse backgrounds. To understand the intricacies by which they employ YCM, I execute a literature review on environmental activism in Lebanon, and I perform a narrative analysis on the organization Fridays for Future Lebanon. I selected Lebanese youth climate activism as a case study to focus on an under-researched, yet dynamic demographic in the Middle East and North Africa. This article concludes that the Grand Narrative of today’s youth climate activists serves as a set of blueprints for a proudly naive, yet justly ambitious, future sustainable world.