[Article] What’s radical? Comparing how climate activists and the general public perceive social movement tactics
A team from CECE has published a paper in Environmental Research Letters that compares perspectives about social movement tactics between climate activists and the general public. Read the abstract below and and Click here to read the article.
As the climate crisis worsens, activists have employed a wide range of tactics to draw attention to the
issue. This paper explores how perspectives on a diversity of social movement tactics—from
mainstream methods of political engagement to violent mutiny—vary between members of the
general public and climate activists. We compare findings from surveys with a nationally
representative sample of 1000 US adults and 306 climate activists that were conducted over the same
time period in fall 2024. Our results show substantial differences in the degree to which various
tactics are perceived as radical: activists tended to perceive peaceful, non-disruptive forms of protest
as significantly less radical than the general public, but viewed civil disobedience, illegal, and violent
tactics to be significantly more radical than the general public. The paper concludes by discussing
the implications of these findings and providing some potential directions for future research.
