Framing action in a youth climate change filmmaking program: Hope, agency, and action across scales

This article presents a mixed methods investigation of discourse about action on climate change and other socioenvironmental challenges in the context of an informal climate change and film education program. We focused on how action was framed by students, their mentors, and in their co-produced films. Students and films predominantly framed action as something that individuals, including youth, can and should do by making small choices in their daily lives. These choices were framed as being effective when many individuals participate in them. Co-produced films spread messages of hope and educated and motivated others to make similar choices. While the dominant framing was one of individual behavior change, there was some contrasting discourse that framed action as a collective social process or necessary at a more systemic level. We discuss these actions across scales from individual behavior change to collective and system-oriented change in terms of hope, agency, neoliberalism, and justice.