Figurationen affektiver Ambiguität. Zum Hashtag #klimakleber auf TikTok

The protest practice of blocking roads by sticking to asphalt has brought the activist organization „Last Generation“ a great deal of attention, especially in 2023, and caused avery emotional public debate. The term „Klimakleber“,coined in this context, bundles rejection and indignation about the disruption of public life but is directly appropriated and used by the Last Generation itself to generate attention for the urgency of its cause. In our article, we examine how the hashtag #klimakleber translates this affective structure into image programmatics and algorithmic logics on TikTok. We choose the platform because the affective dynamics become particularly clear here and we describe the forms of interaction around the hashtag #klimakleber as an „affective arrangement“. We argue that (digital) activist practices surrounding the term „Klimakleber“ are characterized by an affective ambiguity, in which activists, car drivers, politicians, journalists, protesters and counter-protesters intertwine to form a social figuration. We connect this ambiguity with image aesthetics and platform logics ofthe examined videos by using the term „tipping figure“. Following the concept of climatic and social tipping points, which is central to the climate movement and denotes irrevocable turning points of an undesired biophysical change or a desired mobilization, the concept of the „tipping figure“ focuses on an oscillation between different views, a tilting back and forth of possible interpretations. We use this term to shed light on the media figuration of the hashtag #klimakleber and its ambiguity as an activist operator.