Silencing Greta: Exploring Digital Environmental Discourses of Gen Z on Tiktok

This research analyzes digital discourses of environmentalism among Generation Z, using the case study of video memes that remix Greta Thunberg’s 2019 UN Climate Summit speech. Focusing on TikTok, it examines how Thunberg’s speech was recontextualized in memes by employing multimodal strategies of silencing. The study combines insights from Social Media Critical Discourse Studies to highlight how dominant climate narratives are challenged and transformed in digital spaces by and among Gen Z users. Through an integrated multimodal and corpus-assisted critical discourse analytical approach, it captures the layered visual, auditory and textual dimensions of these digital artifacts. The findings reveal a polarized discursive environment in which TikTok’s affordances are mobilized both to amplify and to delegitimize climate advocacy. In doing so, the study helps to understand how participatory platforms mediate contemporary environmental discourses, their role in new forms of youth mobilization, and the quality of the discursive dynamic in society.