International Experiences of Digital Empowerment in a Climate Justice Frame

This project aims to explore whether and (if so) how individuals affected by climate change experience and perceive empowerment through digital crowdsourcing campaigns provided by organisational actors. Unequal inclusion in climate change debates and decision-making processes remains a significant global problem, perpetuating local and global structural inequalities in experiencing and addressing climate change. In response to this issue, various international non-governmental civil society and governmental organisations have initiated crowdsourcing campaigns to involve citizens around the globe. Such campaigns provide open calls through digital platforms with varying aims around participation, ranging from individual submissions of climate change data (e.g. photo evidence or disaster tracking) to group submissions of innovative solutions to specific environmental problems. As such, these campaigns aim to provide more participatory processes. They should therefore, in theory, empower individuals through more participatory digitally-enabled processes, a notion and hypothesis this project aims to test through the lens of climate justice. It will do so through qualitative research including short-term ethnographic fieldwork, long-term digital observation of crowdsourcing initiatives, and focus groups with users of these platforms.