Since late 2018, a global wave of mobilization under the banners of Fridays For Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) has injected new energy into global climate politics. FFF and XR took the world by storm, but have now been forced into (partial) latency as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. We believe this moment presents an opportunity for reflection. In particular, FFF and XR have been depicted as 'new' forms of climate activism. However, we argue that the extent to which these campaigns represent 'new' forms of climate activism is really a matter for closer investigation. In this Profile, we therefore reflect on the distinctiveness of the 'new climate activism' as compared to previous climate campaigns. Reviewing previous studies and our own research, we find that there are both elements of change and continuity in who participates and how, and that the main change appears to be the use of a more politically 'neutral' framing of climate change that is directed more strongly at state than non-state actors.

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Political participation has seen substantial changes in terms of both its structure and its scope. One of the most prominent venues of citizen engagement today is participation that relies on online means. Several approaches to online participation have attempted to understand its nature as a continuation of offline acts into the online realm, or as an independent form. In this article, we determine the place of online participation in the repertoire of political participation with greater precision. We ask whether, in particular, digitally networked participation (DNP) is an expansion of lifestyle politics, or whether there are empirical grounds to classify it as a new, independent mode of participation. We study a large variety of participatory activities using data from an online survey conducted among 2,114 politically active individuals in Belgium in 2017. We use an innovative measurement approach that combines closed-with open-ended questions, which allows us to explore new forms of participation that have previously not been considered or measured. Our results show that DNP is a core part of today's activists' repertoire and a distinct mode of political participation that is clearly attractive to younger, critical citizens.

The proliferation of environmental alternative action organization (EAAOs) is a defining feature of present-day environmentalism. The literature on sustainable materialism has celebrated this as an appropriate, effective, and above all, political strategy. By contrast, drawing on post-political and post-ecologist critiques, some have argued that this shift signifies the de-politicisation of environmentalism because it leaves the status quo unchallenged. In this article, we argue that these opposing views can be reconciled first by considering that 'the political' has at least three different dimensions, and second by taking account of how activists reflexively navigate the different challenges posed by each of these dimensions in their strategizing. Based on an ethnographic case study of two organizations in Manchester (UK), we show that while EAAOs developing environmental alternatives may indeed be motivated by radical ideasas suggested in literature on sustainable materialismthe contradictory demands of diffusion and agonism limit their expression through contentious action. We argue that the post-political context in which these groups operate thus has some depoliticizing impact, yet that activists consciously navigate these challenges to maximize their political impact.

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