Simon Ulrich defends his PhD thesis

This dissertation systematically integrates digital social media traces, concepts from science and technology studies (STS) and environmental movement studies, and qualitative as well as quantitative methodological registers into three digital methods frameworks---digital situational analysis, digital field analysis, and digital actor categorization---to study political situations, strategic action fields, and online publics emerging around environmental and climate politics. Through these frameworks and their application, the dissertation contributes to the fields of digital controversy mapping, digital environmental and climate activism scholarship, and online public sphere research. It leverages the exploratory potential of digital methods research to drive interdisciplinary innovation while generating insights into green transition politics. The thesis develops its contributions through studies of the Danish setting – a compelling case as an anti-nuclear and established environmental state with a substantial administrative, regulatory, and fiscal apparatus to address environmental challenges – offering significant relevance to STS and environmental movement scholarship. One study explores the heterodoxy of the mainstream of green transition politics, analyzing attempts to re-open the issue of nuclear power and the countering of these attempts. This analysis emphasizes the centrality of environmental modes of political engagement beyond technical debate for understanding contestation surrounding technology in the era of the green transition. Another study investigates environmental and climate groups spearheading green transition politics, examining how the environmental activist landscape of an established environmental state evolves in this period of transformation.