Fracking the Online
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Fracking the online: An exploration of the digital in shaping contention over shale gas Imogen Katherine Rattle Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment March 2020 i Statement of Academic Integrity ii Intellectual Property and Publication Statements The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own, except where work which has formed part of jointly authored publications has been included. The contribution of the candidate and the other authors to this work has been explicitly indicated below. The candidate confirms that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others, The work in Chapter 5 of this thesis has been published as: Rattle, I.K., Middlemiss, L. and Van Alstine, J. (2020) “Google fracking” the online information ecology of the English shale gas debate. Energy Research & Social Science. 64 Details of the distribution of work contained within the publication is as follows: • The candidate is the lead author for the publication and responsible for the setting the research questions, data collection and analysis and writing up. • Lucie Middlemiss and James Van Alstine provided supervisorial support, reviewed the manuscript, recommending changes and edits before submission, and during the subsequent revisions made as part of the peer review process. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Imogen Katherine Rattle to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by Imogen Katherine Rattle in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iii Acknowledgements It is difficult to write a thesis acknowledgement without dissolving into an Oscars- style acceptance speech thanking everyone whom one has ever met. As such the following section makes no claims to be exhaustive but provides instead the edited highlights of the last five years. Thanks, first of all, go to my family for their support. Next, to my supervisors, James Van Alstine and Lucie Middlemiss, for academic guidance, patience and unfailing good humour. I would also like to thank Adi Kuntsman for comments on the digital politics chapters and boundless enthusiasm, and Craig Thomas for taking the time to talk to me about his own research on shale gas. Any remaining faults in this thesis are solely my own. I have been very lucky in the friends I have met along the way and those who I knew before I began this PhD. Special mention must go to Liz Covey-Crump and her family for a friendship that spans more than three decades. Thank you for providing a sane voice from outside the academic bubble, a place to live during my MSc, a sounding board, a running companion and for buying me lunch. Thank you also to Katherine Hunter for friendship from afar and a critical eye for errant prepositions. To my fellow PhD students and postdocs, past and present, thank you for drinking coffee with me and putting up with my endless digressions about shale gas. In particular: Lina Brand-Correa; Rachael Carrie; Kate Massarella; Pip Roddis; Kate Scott; Laura Smith; Tom Smith; Harriet Thew, Caroline Ward and Katy Willis, your friendship and support have not only enhanced my time as a PhD student, they have made me a better researcher. Thank you also to all the academic and support staff at SRI Leeds who have been unfailingly generous with their time and support. And finally, I must thank my interviewees who gave freely of their time in the midst of what was, for many, an already pressurised situation. I have endeavoured to do justice to your accounts and hope I have represented them fairly. For anyone who I have forgotten, please accept my apologies. The omission is not out of a lack of appreciation but rather stems from my own forgetfulness. The research was funded through a studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. iv Abstract This thesis applies a post-political lens to online activity on shale gas, using Lancashire, England as its case study. Its focus is upon the ways in which online activity may both contribute to, and constrain, the expression of dissent. It argues there is a dual gap in the current literature: empirically, in considering how online activity may be influencing the development of the debate and theoretically, in how we conceive of conflict over shale gas. It seeks to address these gaps using a combination of 37 stakeholder interviews and social media postings from anti-shale gas groups. The first results chapter draws from post-political theory to build a framework through which to understand the conflict over shale gas in England. It identifies three main areas of dispute: over the legitimate modes for public participation in the debate; over the scope of the threat presented by development, and over the credibility of existing knowledge on shale gas. The second results chapter uses this framework to consider the role of online information in the developing dispute. It shows how a lack of technical information led to an online information divide which constrained how the dominant institutional actors engaged online. Anti-shale gas campaigners remained relatively unconstrained but the substantial burden of online activism contributed towards perceptions of disempowerment, spurring a move to direct action. The third results chapter applies a collective action frame analysis to social media postings aimed at mobilising supporters to take part in direct action. It argues that while mobilising on social media has significant advantages for campaigners, it also has the potential to dilute a movement’s messages amidst pressure to maintain local approbation. The apparent paradoxical effects of digitally mediated activism and the implications for practice and theory are discussed in the final chapter, alongside recommendations for future research. v Table of Contents Statement of Academic Integrity ...................................................................................... i Intellectual Property and Publication Statements .......................................................... ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii Abstract .............................................................................................................................iv List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... x List of Illustrative Materials..............................................................................................xi Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. xii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Why study the digital politics of shale gas? ................................................................ 1 1.2. Research questions ...................................................................................................... 3 1.3. Summary of key contributions and findings ............................................................. 4 1.4. Key terms .................................................................................................................... 6 1.4.1. Relating to shale gas ............................................................................................. 6 1.4.2. Relating to the digital .......................................................................................... 8 1.4.3. Relating to information........................................................................................ 9 1.4.4. Relating to groups opposed to shale gas ............................................................. 9 1.4.5. Relating to individuals opposed to shale gas ...................................................... 11 1.4.6. Relating to institutional actors ............................................................................ 11 1.5. Thesis structure .......................................................................................................... 12 2. Literature review ...................................................................................................... 15 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 15 2.2. Politicising energy production: shale gas in context ............................................... 16 2.2.1. Characteristics of shale gas ................................................................................. 16 2.2.2. Birth of a controversy: from local to global concerns ....................................... 19 2.2.2.1. Shale gas as an issue characterised by uncertainty .....................................20 2.2.2.2. Shale gas as issue characterised by injustice ............................................... 22 2.2.3. Strategies of resistance on and offline ............................................................... 23 2.3. Conceptualising the influence of digital technology use .........................................26 2.4. Digital politics ...........................................................................................................28