Transformation and support of environmental agendas in protest campaigns on social network sites

The introduction of social network sites into the life of society has led to the transformation of the old forms of civic engagement and the emergence of the new ones. Due to the unique features of the virtual space: hypertextuality, extraterritoriality, instant feedback, etc., social processes have reached a new stage of their development. Having received the opportunity for unhindered communication, instant response, as well as a certain degree of anonymity, public activists have become, perhaps, the main beneficiaries of the rapid development of online civil society. Online activity has become rightfully considered one of the forms of social participation, first among activists, later among the scientific community and the authorities. It is precisely because of the attention to this phenomenon that recent online activism could not help but be politicized because social network sites have become a convenient platform for sociopolitical communication. A form of this communication is online protest activity - one of the forms of expression of the will of citizens, implemented in the virtual space. Over time, new forms and types of protest actions began to appear on the network, affecting a wide range of unresolved problems. The aggravation of certain topics is primarily due to the specifics of broadcasting information -the main resource of networks. Depending on the volume of information transmitted, the purposes of its use and the degree of dissemination between users, protest campaigns either attracted the attention of the general public or remained local. The totality of such information, the semantic load used in its translation, goals, motives, ideals, etc. are protest agendas. An analysis of the broadcasting of such agendas can show not only the structure of modern online protests, but also about the prevalence of certain unresolved problems. One of such problems in the past few years is damage caused to the environment and the consequences that this damage brings to residents of certain territories. For several years, in a number of protest environmental campaigns, the environmental agenda has been firmly entrenched in the minds of activists. In this regard, the study analyzes the current coverage of protest environmental agendas, determines the degree of support for such agendas. The politicization of environmental agendas in protest campaigns in 2019 and 2020 has been proven. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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