Repertoires of resistance: The right to feel in European radical climate movements

Abstract

This article examines the production of emotional and symbolic forms of dissent by four climate movements (Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion Italia, Letzte Generation, and Ultima Generazione). Adopting a mixed-methods approach combining sentiment analysis, emotion detection, and socio-semiotic visual analysis, the study examines 1143 press releases (2022–2025) along with 12 protest images, highlighting the digital-embodied protest link, with the aim of exploring the following questions: How do youth-led radical climate movements reconfigure the emotional and symbolic dimensions of socio-ecological practices? In what ways are emotional repertoires articulated across interconnected digital and visual forms of climate protest? The article aims to make three contributions. First, it proposes the concept of “right to feel” as a sociological lens for analysing emotional legitimacy in climate activism. Second, it combines Natural Language Processing and socio-semiotic analysis within a mixed-methods framework. By integrating computational text analysis with socio-semiotic visual interpretation, the article aims to investigate how emotional repertoires shape the public interpretation of ecological crises and support struggles over the public legitimacy of climate emotions. Third, it compares four European radical climate movements across three national contexts. Findings suggest a predominance of negative emotional registers, particularly anger, framing ecological crisis in terms of urgency and institutional accountability.