When everything is NOT awesome. Aktivisme, anklager og krisen som kontekst

Abstract

In 2014 Greenpeace posted a short video appealing to Lego to end its cooperation with Royal Dutch Shell. The video raised an informal accusation and invited its audiences to support it, which more than one million people did. A reputational crisis was inflicted upon the two companies. The article discusses the rhetoric that enabled this activist success and asks to what extent the example set by Greenpeace might be worthy of imitation. It is argued that the mobilizing effect of the video cannot be explained merely by studying its spectacular form and content. The unusual effect must be seen in light of the climate crisis as an affective context that gave the emotional appeals of the video a strong resonance. It was the current climate crisis, implied in the video, which helped create a burning platform for change in the conduct of Lego and Shell