Linguistic Analysis of the Discourse, Structure, and Social Impact of the Hashtag #ClimateMarchPK in Digital Activism

Abstract

Social media has completely altered the way we (the younger generation) enter the social and political spheres and provides us with a platform where we can yell, assemble, and connect. The Climate March has emerged to be a giant in Pakistan, where youths and students stand up to address climate change and the disintegration of our earth. This paper plunges into this language of tweets with the hashtag of the climate march PK, analysing the words and phrases and emotion Pakistani young people invest their posts with. The study combines quantitative and qualitative methods, as it first counts and frequencies keywords, but delves into the sentiment and themes. We obtained data in Twitter/X directly by scraping as well as through manual review of posts on the event dates. The analysis demonstrates similar linguistic patterns, the central emotions and theme trends which reflect the participating students' interaction, their awareness of the environment and group pressures. The results indicate that the discussion about the #ClimateMarchPK is dotted with such words as climate, action, future, youth, and Pakistan, whereas the most widespread feelings are hope, frustration, and urgency. In addition, hype tools such as hashtags and emojis are used, which unite people and enhance online presence. The given work allows us to comprehend the functioning of student-driven climate activism in Pakistan and emphasise the importance of social media as an arena of activism and emotional release.