A climate activist, a pot of orange paint and a can of soup walk into a museum. What happens next?
What do people really think about Just Stop Oil’s performative climate protests?
As the climate emergency worsens, millions of people across the world have joined climate protests, demanding urgent action from leaders to tackle global warming. In April 1970, the first-ever Earth Day saw nearly 20 million people marching as a call to action to protect the environment. Now, over 50 years later, youth-led movements like Fridays For Future heralded by Greta Thunberg, international movements such as Extinction Rebellion and groups like Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil have ramped up their activities to underscore the urgency of climate action.
Just Stop Oil describes itself as a ‘coalition of groups working together to ensure the UK Government commits to halting new fossil fuel licensing and production’. From glueing themselves to paintings to blocking motorways and throwing food on famous works of art – members of Just Stop Oil have shown they will go to any length to raise awareness of the harmful nature of fossil fuels. Yet, whilst drawing attention to the important issue of the climate emergency, their performative acts and direct action have left an unsavoury taste in the mouth of members of the public.
The group is demanding a halt to any new licences for oil, gas and coal projects in the UK. One protestor involved urged that "We all need to do everything in our power to stop this madness continuing”. She noted that whilst they risk their jobs, livelihoods and reputations, "There is a better, cleaner, safer future, but only if we fight for it."
For Just Stop Oil protestors, there seems to be no better alternative to bring attention to the climate emergency than by organising the various protests that have taken place over the last year. In July 2022, the group’s protestors glued themselves to a Da Vinci copy of The Last Supper inside the Royal Academy. They’ve also taken to motorways to block traffic in busy areas such as the M25 in London on numerous occasions in July and November. Members of Just Stop Oil are often the centre of attention as they disrupt public events, usually with their unmissable orange powder and paint. For example, the World Snooker Championships, the Chelsea Flower Show and even invading rugby matches held at Twickenham stadium
We set out to measure the efficacy of their work. Ripple Research investigated Just Stop Oil’s recent protests to understand public perceptions about their tactics and to ascertain if this form of provocative protest is proving effective and bringing about meaningful change and lasting conversations.
We analysed the period from April 2022 to April 2023 and identified that these events seem to capture only momentary online attention and engagement.
Highlighted below, our insights found that the range of Just Stop Oil activities were characterised by negative sentiment, which peaked in October 14th 2022 at an event now referred to as ‘soupgate’. Here, protestors from the Just Stop Oil collective threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh painting in London and were later arrested for their actions. Continue reading to learn about the impact this event had.
Such negative emotions continue to be highlighted in daily public interactions with Just Stop Oil. In May, a member of the public shoved protestors and even grabbed one of their phones whilst they were walking along the streets.
From our research, the majority of conversations about Just Stop Oil took place on platforms like Twitter, reddit and news websites. These conversations were largely concentrated in the UK, as well as in the US and Japan. At a regional level, London dominated the conversations followed by High Wycombe and New York City.
We found that content on reddit was not supportive of Just Stop Oil. When these protests were mentioned, it was characterised by narratives focused on ridicule or disdain, rather than climate change or climate action. Our investigation revealed that even popular climate-oriented subreddits like r/climate or r/climatechange barely mention Just Stop Oil protests - with 113 mentions and 3 mentions respectively over a one-year period.
A closer look at #soupgate
On October 14th 2022 in London, Van Gogh’s famous sunflower artwork received an unexpected coat of paint. When Just Stop Oil activists threw soup over the art, it sparked a significant conversation online, with over 140,000 conversations taking place across social media, online forums and the news. The group asked “Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?”, arguing that “Only Civil Resistance can get us out of this crisis — it’s time to step up and stand up for what’s right.”
To understand the ripple effects of this specific protest, we analysed the digital media impact of soupgate from October 1st to November 30th.
Soupgate conversations took place mostly online via Twitter and reddit. Instead of galvanising important conversations on subreddits dedicated to climate action, the event generated a lot of public backlash on subreddits like R/publicfreakout and R/faceplant. For example, engagement on subreddits that mentioned this event were dedicated to themes like “The worst of the worst, people who you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.”
As with other Just Stop Oil activities, soupgate was seasoned with negativity that dominated the online discourse following the event in mid-October.
However, it is important to note that there was a degree of support for the event, with emotions like love, surprise and joy detected too.
The future - Time for new tactics?
Our findings reveal that most people active online are against Just Stop Oil and their forms of direct action. Thus far, we’ve found it’s generated more hate than positive sentiment and emotions.
At the beginning of 2023, Extinction Rebellion, the world-famous climate movement, announced a change of their strategy to bring more people on board with their aims. They publicly announced that XR would be moving away from disruptive tactics at the beginning of 2023 with a new year resolution to “prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks”.
In the UK, it appears that groups such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil are working to fill the gap on more divisive, aggressive climate action which XR have now stepped away from. The passing of the UK Police and Crime Bill that imposes measures on the right to peaceful protest could limit such action in the future.
At a time when we need people to engage on the topic of the climate emergency and advocate for change, frequent protests like soupgate or motorway roadblocks can sometimes create a talking point, but in the long-term fade in interest and perhaps, even alienate members of the public. From our insights we did not observe the positive externality or meaningful impact from these events - this signifies it could be time for a change in tactics.
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Could there be a long time effect of bringing attention to the topic in general, in which the perceived significance of the climate crisis gets increased without specifically being connected to those actions in social media posts?