The 90% PhD Seminar of Saralie Sernhede, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Studies on 'Media matters of civic education in the Swedish youth-led climate movement: networks of materiality, subjectivity, and active citizens.'

Welcome to the next higher seminar organised by the Media and Communication Studies department!

In this higher seminar, our doctoral student, Saralie Sernhede, will present on her PhD research project titled 'Media matters of civic education in the Swedish youth-led climate movement: networks of materiality, subjectivity, and active citizens.'

In 2018, thousands of young people around the world left their classrooms to school strike for the climate. In the years that followed, a globally networked and youth-led climate movement developed. An accompanying critique of the climate strikers was directed at the institution of education, apparent through their action of school striking for the climate and continuously embedded in movement messaging, posing the question: are we studying for a future that does not exist? Seven years later, the Swedish youth-led climate movement remains a network of such critique, organizing protest activities such as demonstrations and strikes, as well as educational contexts such as workshops, seminar series, and study circles. The aim of this study is to understand the role of media materialities in assembling the youth-led climate movement as a format for alternative forms of civic education, where subjectification and the emergence of citizens are not shaped by formalized curricula and educational environments but through protest and resistance. Methodologically, it draws on ethnographic fieldwork that is hybrid across the online offline divide (Hine, 2008), multi-sited (Marcus, 1995), and visually oriented (Pink, 2011), deploying observations in both physical and digital settings, as well as interviews with activists. Theoretically it adopts a socio-material and relational approach particularly found in actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Law, 2007) to trace assembled figurations of civic education and the active citizen in the youth-led climate movement in Sweden. The analysis further engages with educational and political theorists such as Gert Biesta (2010; 2014; 2022), Hanna Arendt (1958; 1961), and John Dewey (1916; 1925), joining discussions concerned with the relationship between schooling and democracy, between young people and politics, as well as between resistance and education. This thesis culminates in an analysis of the youth-led climate movement as a network of arrival of subjects, collective critical inquiry, and protest media production, ultimately pointing towards a tentative alternative civic curriculum of protest media literacy embedded in resistance and educational risk (Biesta, 2022).

It is possible read the PhD manuscript in advance as well as to join the higher seminar on campus and online via Zoom. Contact us for the Zoom details if you'd like to join online, and if you'd like to read the manuscript in full.