Divided yet united: Balancing convergence and divergence in environmental movement mobilization

Environmental movements play an increasingly pivotal role in societal responses to pressing issues, such as climate change. These movements are often multi-scalar, spanning locations, ideological orientations, organisational types, and tactics. We investigate how the UK’s anti-fracking movement manages the tension between the necessary convergence of collective actions and this divergence of scale. Based on a frame analysis of press releases, position papers, websites, blogs and 20 semi-structured interviews, the paper shows how heterogeneous environmental movement actors, with diverse framings of fracking, utilised three convergence processes – funnelling, expanding and familiarising – making connections vertically, horizontally and contextually. These processes created a ‘web’ of resistance that held the environmental movement together while maintaining diversity. Our paper contributes to the environmental movement literature by explaining how movements overcome divergence without establishing homogeneity. This is important in understanding how environmental movements can expand their role within a broader constituency in opposing environmental destruction.