Abstract
In an era defined by intensifying ecological crisis and platform capitalism, youth-led climate movements in Global South urban centers are actively repurposing digital platforms to contest environmental degradation and articulate radical visions of justice. This study investigates the formation of political subjectivity and grassroots digital practices among climate justice activists across three vulnerable metropolitan hubs: Manila, Nairobi, and Belém. Drawing on an eighteen-month multi-sited netnography combined with thirty-six in-depth semi-structured digital interviews, we examine how activists navigate, subvert, and negotiate the algorithmic architectures of mainstream social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, X, and WhatsApp). The findings reveal that digital climate activism in the Global South transcends algorithmic determinism through three distinct socio-technical mechanisms: vernacular algorithmic obfuscation, affective digital counter-publics, and relational spatial bridging between digital discourse and localized territorial defense. Rather than succumbing to performative 'clicktivism' or algorithmic atomization, participants construct decolonial political subjectivities that explicitly tether climate breakdown to historical colonial extraction, urban precarity, and global debt structures. This paper expands contemporary sociological understanding of digital environmentalism by highlighting how peripheral urban youth forge autonomous spaces of political agency, offering crucial theoretical insights into the nexus of digital sociology, urban political ecology, and Southern social movements.
