States of Anxiety:
Expertise and Activism in Digital and Ecological Environments
Led by Prof. Dr. Margarita Boenig-Liptsin and Dr. Gabriel Dorthe
What does it mean to be a citizen of both the age of information and the climate change era? Studies conducted with young people in both domains repeatedly come to the same conclusion: the surplus of information and the felt incapacity to act on a swiftly changing world combine to create tremendous anxiety. This 4-year research project in the field of Science, Technology and Society (STS), examines the destabilization and the reformation of individual and collective identity, citizenship, agency and knowledge at the intersection of emotive concerns related to digital technologies and the environmental crisis. Rather than viewing anxiety as an emotional response to overwhelming knowledge about the world’s troubles, as framed in the literature, we approach it as a central modality of knowing that fosters modes of collective mobilization and offers vital perspectives on making collective life in advanced technological societies.
We ethnographically engage with three epistemic communities who address anxiety with diverse knowledge and activist practices:
1) Youth and parents who aim to counteract the negative impacts of digital technologies on children and young adults, including by relying on and contributing to social psychology and behavioral sciences (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+Reclaim, the Anxious Generation Movement, Smartphone-freie Kindheit Schweiz);
2) Scientist activists who raise awareness about climate change by bringing Earth system sciences to the public’s attention (Scientist Rebellion);
3) Environmentalists who defend biodiversity and oppose destructive infrastructure projects with field-based naturalist knowledges (Les Naturalistes des terres).
With this research design, we consciously invert the sociotechnical and the natural, examining the digital as an environment and the natural as a device, that together contribute to states of anxiety within which people reconstruct new modes of knowing and living.
This project builds an understanding of anxiety as a pervasive and generative societal response to life in advanced technological societies. It seeks to develop resources for ethical and democratic responses to states of anxiety by reconsidering the role of traditional scientific inquiry and teaching in higher education, research institutions, and the public at large.
The project is organized into four empirically informed theoretical Work Packages (WPs):
WP1 documents collective dimensions of forms of expert activism mobilized in the name of anxiety about digital and environmental transformations, paying specific attention to how activists produce, incorporate, discuss, complement, and publicize relevant knowledges to turn individual anxiety into collective engagement in sustained practices.
WP2 analyzes the political dimensions of these forms of knowledge when they are embedded in strategies and practices, examining how they engage in public debate, establish the legitimacy of their expertise, and strive to foster sensible modes of attention.
WP3 provides a systematic analysis of how interconnected concerns about digital technologies and environmental sciences shape how people experience life in technoscientific societies.
WP4 reflects on the opportunities for science and engineering education to address the issues identified in WP1-3. We will translate our research conducted with activist collectives into pedagogical resources to share with the wider community of educators at higher education institutions in Switzerland and abroad.
This project calls for a conceptually-inclined ethnographic approach that allows us to attend to how social actors define issues of concern in real-world situations of complexity and ambiguity and to articulate unexpected connections across actors’ perspectives and between empirical observation and theoretical knowledge. Our goal is not an exhaustive study of the selected collectives, but rather long-term qualitative engagement. As our three fields of inquiry show interest in questions that are also treated in interpretative social sciences and STS, we will draw on action research methods and approach our interlocutors as co-producers of ethnographic analysis about their own modes of knowing.
The expected outputs exemplify our commitment to academic excellence and serious engagement with our research interlocutors in the upstream development of the research and in the co-design of society-relevant outputs. We will publish (co-authored) scientific articles and outreach outputs written with our research interlocutors in formats that contribute to their activities and advance the communication of our research findings. To build momentum and visibility in Zürich and Switzerland, we will also organize a lecture series and several public workshops in which our research interlocutors are invited to participate.
Project duration: 01.10.2026 – 31.08.2030
This project is funded by the external page Swiss National Science Foundation.