Communication Creates Partial Organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Abstract

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). Whereas YFC begun as a leader-centered movement, the movement's founders went on to include a wider group of organizers in the national team. Conversely, FFFI begun as an ostensibly leaderless movement but evolved into an increasingly structured organization with elected delegates and national spokespersons. We argue that the two movements partially structured themselves in order to reconcile two conflicting sets of aspirations and requirements: the open, inclusive, and egalitarian ethos of social movements, and the need of navigating the complexities of a type of activism that is cognizant of media exposure, relies on expert knowledge, and manages an advanced division of political labor between local, national, and international groups.