Greta Thunberg Online and in Translation: Neurodivergent Resistance, Community and Possibilities

Usually portrayed as a climate activist rather than as an influencer, Greta Thunberg’s words and actions of resistance have been multiply translated and interpreted – across languages, cultures and media, but also by neurotypical readers/audiences and powerful vested interests opposed to her work. Thunberg has publicly recognised her neurodivergence, framing her Asperger’s status as an important foundation for her campaigning.

This paper presents a case study of Thunberg’s campaigning on Gaza as represented on a number of social platforms. Neurodivergent activists’ words and actions of resistance represent a powerful, multi-layered illustration of the complexity of (mis)translation within the content creation economy. If the social internet is a reflection of who we are and we indeed have agency in shaping its future (Jarvis 2024; Lorenz 2023), it must reflect human neurodiversity and neurodivergent people’s agency. However, given that a core feature of neurodiversity is distinct communication approaches, there is greater risk that neurodivergent creators find their content misunderstood and misinterpreted, within and across languages and cultures.

Online platforms are often experienced as positive spaces for neurodivergent people; they are often where we first see ourselves reflected and come to realise our neurodivergence. Ethical neurodivergent content creation offers a way to resist overwhelmingly dominant neurotypical paradigms, to find new possibilities and build community. Online neurodivergent communities and creators have grappled particularly with the tension between ethical communities of welcome being built on unethical, unsafe platforms. The social internet and its platforms in this context represent a complex ecology where resistance and possibility clearly co-exist in ways both harmful and urgently necessary. Online social content represents a fruitful arena in which to study translation and multilingual communication (Desjardins 2024); the content shared by and about Thunberg is particularly fruitful as it also offers new insights into a different emerging kind of cross-cultural (neurodivergent/neurotypical) ‘translation’ and (mis)interpretation.

The talk outlines some key translations and interpretations of Thunberg’s campaigning on Gaza, across multiple platforms and languages. Thunberg has argued that her longstanding support for Gaza has been received very differently than her climate activism, though for her they are driven by the same attachment to ethics and justice. Differences in ethical focus and commitment have been recognised as markers of autism (Hartman and Hartman, 2024). Thunberg has harnessed such committed focus to build multilingual, multinational, multicultural resistance in ways that, I will argue, fit well with emerging understandings of a ‘neuroqueer’ ethics (Walker, 2021), offering rich new possibilities to both neurodivergent and neurotypical people – including arguably a new kind of complex social internet ecology.