The impact of online resistance on political decision-making in Lynetteholm: The role of social media and the dredging of sludge in Køge bay

The public debate about high-profile urban planning project Lynetteholm, in Copenhagen, has been unfolding on social media platforms. Grassroot-movements have leveraged social media as way of mobilizing resistance against the project. In February-June 2022 the public debate about the dredging of sludge in Køge bay, that related to Lynetteholm, was going on.
The dredging of sludge was highly contested and over the course of the debate a series of political decisions were made about how to manage the sludge, that deviated dramatically from the original plan. Amongst other things, this resulted in increased expenses and delayed timelines. In the same timeframe heightened activity can be observed on social media groups from activist grassroot movements. This begs the question if the bottom-up activity on social media, has an influence on political decision-making in urban planning projects, in a way that can be empirically documented. This was what I have tried to capture by homing in on the sludge debate in Lynetteholm, in order to shed light on whether social media impose new condition on the public debate and public opinion about urban planning projects, and if so, what are these new conditions?