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.

Frame alignment theory has become a dominant perspective on how people get mobilized into social movement activities. Most theoretical accounts on micromobilization take individuals' congruence with social movement organizations' frames as a starting point. However, the positive effect of frame alignment on protest participation has mostly been approached as an assumption rather than as an empirical question. Additionally, measuring frame alignment and testing its effect on participation is methodologically challenging. As a result, it has remained unclear to what extent an individual's degree of frame alignment increases the chance that he or she will participate in protest. Using panel survey data on a street demonstration organized in Belgium in 2016 (N=2,646), we compare the frame components broadcasted by the organizers with the specific diagnostic and prognostic frame components held by both sympathizing participants and sympathizing non-participants. We test the effect of frame alignment on people's intention to join a protest and on participation as such, while accounting for multiple alternative determinants of protest participation. Our results suggest that frame alignment affects the likelihood that a sympathizer will intend to participate, which in turn affects participation.

In 2019, the world witnessed an exceptional wave of climate protests. In this case study, we scrutinise who participated in the protests staged in Belgium. We ask: did the exceptional mobilising context of the 2019 protest wave also bring exceptional protesters to the streets? Were thanks to the unique momentum standard barriers to protest participation overcome? We answer these questions by comparing three surveys of participants in the 2019 protest wave with three surveys of relevant reference publics. Our findings show that while the Belgian 2019 protest was in many ways exceptional, its participants were less so. Although participantsespecially in the early phase of the protest wave -were less protest experienced, younger and unaffiliated to organisations, our findings simultaneously confirm the persistence of a great many well-known socio-demographic and political inequalities. Our conclusion centres on the implications of these findings.

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