Extinction Rebellion in the frame: An analysis of XR's nascent mobilisation from the social movement framing perspective

The emergence of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in late 2018 heralded a major evolution in climate and environmental activism in the UK and internationally. XR's framing of the issues of climate change and biodiversity loss and its strategy of mass nonviolent civil disobedience appeared distinct from what had gone before. The social movement framing perspective offers a theoretical framework for understanding this distinctiveness and helps to develop an explanation of XR's mobilisation. The research triangulates qualitative ethnographic methods including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis to investigate the frames and framing processes of XR including the genesis, development and amplification of frames. Interviews with XR co-founders, key activists in the central teams, and the co-founders and 'rank-and-file' members of a local group, Canterbury XR, capture 'the story of XR' from the planning stage through its public emergence and national scale shift, including the April and October 2019 London Rebellions. XR's emergency master frame and the multiple aspects and layers of its collective action frame including several key motivational frames are interpreted and explained. The research also captures XR's strategy, organisation, media management, culture and the personal experience of participants. Connections to antecedent social movement groups, networks and mobilisations are explored. In its emergency master framing, civil disobedience and focus on mass participation, XR more closely resembles the anti-nuclear movement in the 1960s including the Committee of 100, the Direct Action Committee and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and CND's second wave in the 1980s, than the antecedent and contemporary climate justice movement. XR experimented with a holacratic mode of de-centralised organising and there are cultural and organisational threads of continuity from the Occupy movement and a radical direct action tradition in British environmentalism. The suspension of injustice/justice frames and frame alignment processes served to position XR as a disruptor in the social movement landscape. Focussing on XR UK in its nascency, the seminal stage of what became a global movement is captured, and a baseline of knowledge for comparative analysis with international XR groups, future iterations of XR in the UK or the climate movement more broadly is provided. The research may help future iterations of the climate movement to develop framing strategies, and might be particularly relevant to a re-invigorated peace movement.