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Social movement organizations (SMOs) increasingly rely on Twitter to create new and viral communication spaces alongside newsworthy protest events and communicate their grievance directly to the public. When the COVID-19 pandemic impeded street protests in spring 2020, SMOs had to adapt their strategies to online-only formats. We analyze the German-language Twitter communication of the climate movement Fridays for Future (FFF) before and during the lockdown to explain how SMOs adapted their strategy under online-only conditions. We collected (re-)tweets containing the hashtag #fridaysforfuture ( N = 46,881 tweets, N = 225,562 retweets) and analyzed Twitter activity, use of hashtags, and predominant topics. Results show that although the number of tweets was already steadily declining before, it sharply dropped during the lockdown. Moreover, the use of hashtags changed substantially and tweets focused increasingly on thematic discourses and debates around the legitimacy of FFF, while tweets about protests and calls for mobilization decreased.

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One aspect of the mediatization of politics is the idea that political actors adapt to the communication logic of news media to gain, for example, news media attention. Currently, this process may be influenced by the diffusion of the internet as a political communication channel, especially because online communication provides a new opportunity for political actors to communicate directly with citizens. Thus far, the adaptation to media logic by political parties has mainly been examined in the context of election campaigns. In order to transfer these findings to regular political communication, this study compares the use of media logic in the mass media and in direct political communication channels online and offline about the United Nations Climate Change Conferences 2011 and 2012. A quantitative content analysis of the conference protocols (input) and the presentation of the conference results in the seven most frequently used German offline news outlets (print and TV) and their online counterparts, as well as political offline and online communication channels like parliamentary speeches and websites of the six parties represented in the German parliament (output), was conducted. Results show that in the context of regular political communication, political actors seem to follow media logic to a lesser extent than in the context of election campaigns. Thus far, the influence of online communication on the mediatization of politics seems to be rather marginal. The causes and consequences of these findings are discussed.