On June 27, Maria Fernandes-Jesus presented a webinar for the Climate, Environment, and Psychology Division of the Psychological Society of South Africa entitled “Shaping Our Collective Futures: Radical Political Imagination Towards Climate Justice.” In this presentation, the researcher discussed the work developed through focus group discussions with various engaged and non-engaged youths with climate action, exploring political imaginaries and their impact towards just social transformations.
On June 26, the JustFutures team collectively presented work developed across various work packages of the project during the monthly seminar on Social Movements and Political Seminar, organised by Guya Accornero and Tiago Carvalho. This seminar was online and in-person in the University Institute of Lisbon. Tânia R. Santos, Dora Rebelo, Daniela Ferreira da Silva, Mehmet Ali Uzelgun, and Anabela Carvalho presented and discussed research related to youth political agency, the political imaginaries of activist groups and their emotional/affective dimensions, and how mainstream television represents and legitimises different political imaginaries and different types of youth climate activism.
A recording of the seminar will be available on the CIES-Iscte youtube channel soon.
Tânia R. Santos presented a communication titled: “Young climate activists and the discursive limits of climate politics: analysing the diversity of voices of the movement and their media portrayal” during the international and interdisciplinary scientific conference on “Overcoming Obstacles to Climate Change Mitigation:a cross-cutting approach by human and social sciences”. This conference took place in UCLouvain in a hybrid format on 23-24 May 2024. Tânia R. Santos presented online on the topic of how different political imaginaries of youth climate collectives in Portugal are differently presented on television. On mainstream media outlets, a clear distinction (and preference) is given to dutiful dissent without fully discussing the political imaginaries proposed by disruptive dissent, such as school and university occupations. This work was jointly elaborated with Daniela Ferreira da Silva and Anabela Carvalho.
On 9 May, Daniela Ferreira da Silva gave a presentation titled “The (re)construction of science in the discourses of climate activist groups” at SciComPT 2014 – Languages and voices for accessible science. The conference took place in Braga, at Uminho from 8-10 May. The presentation, co-authored with Anabela Carvalho, focused on research suggesting that identifying young activists merely or predominantly as ambassadors or communicators of the scientific message is a simplistic evaluation. In the analysis of results, a more nuanced form of the use of science by Portuguese activist groups was discussed.
On March 6, Anabela Carvalho was invited to share the collaborative work of herself, Tânia R. Santos, and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün at the Climate Journalism Seminar hosted by the School of Communication and Media Studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon (ESCS-IPL). The seminar included a series of presentations from researchers, professors, and journalists specializing in climate journalism.
During their presentation, titled “The Media and Citizen Engagement with Climate Change,” the JustFutures team discussed how media platforms represent young climate activists. The presentation provided data-driven insights into how youth-led climate movements are portrayed on television, highlighting key trends and discussing their implications for broader climate communication strategies.
Daniela Ferreira da Silva and Anabela Carvalho participated with presentations related to the tasks of the JustFutures project at the XIII SOPCOM Congress, which took place in Braga from January 24 to 26, 2024.
Daniela Ferreira da Silva gave a talk on “Youth Climate Activism: Participatory Methodologies in Promoting Political Imagination among Young People” during the session on crisis communication and activism. The presentation focused on a literature review of participatory methodologies used with young people in discussing alternative futures and political imagination.
Anabela Carvalho presented her work related to “Environmental Communication and Environmental Journalism: The Ethics of a Disciplinary Field Confronted with Existential Threats” in the ethics and deontology session, addressing the need for ethical guidance in the work of journalists dealing with issues related to climate change. Anabela also presented the study on “The Interaction of Television Voices in Shaping the Climate Debate among Young Activists and Other Social Actors” in the journalism and society session. This work focused on the analysis of the intermodal interactions to delegitimise the actions on young climate activists on a television reportage.
At the invitation of the organizers of the seminar series on ‘Discourse and Sustainability,’ Anabela Carvalho presented a seminar titled ‘Political imaginaries and climate change’ on December 15, 2023, via video conference. In addition to exploring the concept of political imaginaries and the theorization of related matters, the presentation analyzed a set of recent protests by the groups Climáximo and Greve Climática Estudantil Lisboa (GCE-Lisboa), their websites, and press articles written by activists from GCE-Lisboa.
The ‘Discourse and Sustainability’ series is led by Michael Farrelly from the University of Hull and Michael Kraenert from the University of Southampton. It is part of the working group with the same title within the DiscourseNet network, a collaborative network focused on Discourse Studies.
Tânia R. Santos participated as a guest speaker in the academic course “Communication for Social Change,” organised by Marcin Lewiński and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün within the Master’s program in Communication Sciences at FCSH-UNL. The presentation took place on November 23, 2023, and focused on the task that has been analysing the representation of climate-conscious youth on Portuguese television at two distinct moments: from 2019 to 2021 and in 2022.
On October 10th, Carla Malafaia participated in the Roundtable “Researching Activisms in the Portuguese Context” (conducted in English) on behalf of the JustFutures Project. She presented the main contributions of the project in the field of climate activism, focusing her intervention on two dimensions: Mobilization and Action; Representation and Imagination. This roundtable, which also featured the participation of Rosa Cabecinhas, Ricardo Campos, and Sofia Caldeira, discussed research on activist practices through various methodological approaches. The seminar, organized by the FEMglocal Project, took place at the Lusófona University (University Center of Porto) and MIRA FORUM (Porto) and aimed to foster spaces for discussion and sharing about activism, communication strategies, media representation, and research related to social movements.
On October 27th, Anabela Carvalho presented a communication titled “Climate Movement in Portugal: A Portrait in Various Dimensions,” co-authored with Maria Fernandes-Jesus, Carla Malafaia, and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün at the 5th Sustainable Campus Conference (CCS 2023), an event organized by the Sustainable Campus Network in Portugal. This year, the conference was hosted by the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo and took place on October 26th and 27th, 2023, at the School of Technology and Management of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo. The overarching theme of the event was “Empowering Climate Action: From Campus to Community,” with youth activism being one of the subtopics. It was published in the conference proceedings, an extended summary that can be accessed here.
