Robyn Gulliver

University of Queensland | UQ · School of Journalism and Communication

A sustained groundswell of grassroots advocacy is required to trigger the urgent action required to solve our many global environmental problems. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics, issue focus, tactics and targets of this grassroots advocacy, we analyzed the website communications of 497 environmental movement organizatio...

Climate change is a global problem requiring a collective response. Grassroots advocacy has been an important element in propelling this collective response, often through the mechanism of campaigns. However, it is not clear whether climate change campaigns organised by environmental advocacy groups are successful in achieving their goals, nor the...

This Element reviews the social psychology of effective collective action, highlighting the importance of considering activists' goals, timeframes, and psychological perspectives in seeking to conceptualise this construct. A novel framework 'ABIASCA' maps effectiveness in relation to activists' goals for mobilisation and change (Awareness raising;...

This monograph presents an empirical analysis of the Australian climate change movement to determine the extent to which activists are incorporating civil resistance into their tactical repertoire, what these actions look like, and what goals they are achieving. Using three movement frameworks as a theoretical foundation, it provides an overview...

Collective action plays a critical role in progressing efforts to protect the global environment. In this study we examined existing research that specified causal claims about the outcomes of sustained environmental collective action and analysed the collective action characteristics associated with the stated outcomes. Of the 640 studies identifi...

Researchers have examined how extreme weather experiences influence climate change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, with mixed results. However, limited research has explored how extreme weather experiences may affect climate-related perceptions and behaviors among climate activists. Given the significant role activism plays in climate action, as...

This paper seeks to examine how Australian environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) communicate about and mobilise their supporters for climate justice. ENGOs play an important role in raising awareness and changing values, attitudes and behaviours related to climate justice. However, while many Australian ENGOs have begun incorporating...

Both bystanders and journalists can play important roles in mobilizing and supporting social movements. However, there are few empirical studies examining and contrasting their violent and nonviolent collective-action motivations or perspectives on social movement goals. This study presents a comparative analysis of motivations to engage or stand a...

This article examines the strategies used by a democratic state to suppress dissent by criminalizing social protest activities. We compile and tabulate new legislation in Australia affecting protest rights from 2010 to 2020. Using data collected from the Facebook pages of 728 environmental groups and climate-related arrests reported in media articl...

The present research examined the interplay of social threat and political mistrust on collective action intentions in the context of Hong Kong social unrest. We investigated perceived social threat from a dominant outgroup and mistrust in the political system as two antecedents of politicized identity, and as indirect predictors of intentions to p...

Environmental activism organizations depend on recruiting and retaining individuals willing to engage in leadership tasks on a voluntary basis. This study examined the resources which help or hinder sustained environmental volunteer activist leadership behaviors. Interviews with 21 environmental volunteer activist leaders were analyzed within a Res...

This paper seeks to examine how Australian environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) communicate about and mobilise their supporters for climate justice. ENGOs play an important role in raising awareness and changing values, attitudes and behaviours related to climate justice. However, while a number of Australian ENGOs have begun incorp...

In three studies, we examined the role of distrust and perceived threat in intentions to engage in normative and violent non‐normative collective action. A field‐based qualitative study of 35 pro‐democracy protestors during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti‐Extradition protests revealed that perceived threat to Hong Kong values alongside distrust of politica...

Fashion has long been associated with resistance movements across Asia and Australia, from the hand-spun cotton Khadi of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle to the traditional ankle length robe worn by Tibetans in the ‘White Wednesday Movement’ (Singh et al.; Yangzom). There are many reasons why fashion and activism have been interlinked. Fashion can...

The Australian bushfires in 2019–2020 triggered massive amounts of charitable giving from the community. We applied agenda‐setting theory to examine if and how disaster news coverage influenced public donations in response to the crisis. A survey of 949 Australians found that people perceived news coverage of the event to be a strong influence on t...

Volunteers play critical roles in leading the activities of environmental organizations seeking to address the environmental crisis. Despite their importance, we know little about the factors that motivate individuals to engage in different environmental volunteer behaviors. Drawing on an extended Theory of Planned Behavior model, this study survey...

Water management increasingly focuses on tackling stormwater pollution to improve waterway health. Community members have a role in adopting pollution-reduction practices and supporting technologies such as water sensitive urban design. However, because communities are unfamiliar with these practices and technologies, little is known about how they...

With more than 10,000 islands scattered over 800,000 square kilometers, Oceania is a region of geographic and environmental extremes. From the white sand atolls in the Marshall Islands to the red dirt of the Australian arid lands, this continent is also on the forefront of experiencing the effects of our global environmental crisis. Rising tides, e...

This report presents findings from a comparative analysis of media coverage across Australia for three 2019 protests: Extinction Rebellion’s Rebellion Week (October 2019), School Strike for Climate (September 2019) and Stop Adani (2017-2019). The purpose of this analysis was to identify the coverage generated by Rebellion Week and SS4C and assess w...

The Advocates: Women within the Australian Environmental Movement From boardrooms to blockade camps, from the lush East Gippsland forests to the golden Ningaloo Reef, the fight against environmental destruction takes place in many spaces. The Advocates tells the inside story of nine extraordinary women within the Australian environmental movement...

Environmental organisations use a variety of text based communication formats to mobilize supporters to take collective action on their behalf. Yet we know little about the characteristics of collective action communication used by environmental organizations, nor its mobilization potential. In this paper we investigate whether environmental organi...

Big data and advanced computational methods are increasingly being used to inform decision making in social policy globally. As a result, there is a pressing need to identify best practice digital infrastructure design that allows policymakers and social sciences researchers to access, manipulate and use big data soundly and ethically, while identi...

Climate change is the most significant threat to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). While Australians express appreciation and concern for the GBR, it is not clear whether they connect climate-related action with reef conservation. An online survey of 4,285 Australians asked “…what types of actions could people like you do that would be helpful for the...

Images are commonly used in environmental advocacy campaigns that are designed to promote collective action. However, the effects of different types of images have rarely been examined. In three experiments (combined N = 1426), we tested the impact of commonly used campaign images (meeting, protest, or no image) on willingness to engage in collecti...