Mapping wind-power controversies on social media: Facebook as a powerful mobilizer of local resistance

Abstract Social media is a powerful communication tool through its universality and ease of access, which potentially has a huge impact on implementation of wind power. This study investigate a large corpus of Danish Facebook pages advocating anti-wind power viewpoints, distinguishing between localisation, different user groups, subjects and activity types. In doing this the following questions are answered: How localised are wind protests on Facebook?; To what extent can we perform a qualitative discourse analysis on different groups of Facebook users?; What can be said about the differences between community and cross-cutting Facebook users?; How are the voiced concerns articulated?; How are concerns managed by Facebook users?