Mapping Wind Energy Controversies Online: Introduction to Methods and Datasets

Abstract

As part the Wind2050 project funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research we have mapped controversies on wind energy as they unfold online. Specifically we have collected two purpose built datasets, a web corpus containing information from 758 wind energy websites in 6 different countries, and a smaller social media corpus containing information from 14 Danish wind energy pages on Facebook. These datasets have been analyzed to answer questions like: How do wind proponents and opponents organize online? Who are the central actors? And what are their matters of concern? The purpose of this report is to provide a description of the datasets, the methods we used to build them, and suggest possible scenarios of use.

Keywords: Wind turbines, wind energy, wind farms, controversy mapping, public acceptance, digital methods