Belief structures in civic online forest discussion

In this article, I approach online civic discussion as an important form of public debate that reflects and supplements the official forest discussion. I identify the shared beliefs and belief-based structures within the Finnish online forest-related debate among participating citizens. In addition, I examine the extent to which these identified structures reflect the established forestry and preservation positions and paradigms of the official discussion. A range of online user discussions about forests from five Finnish-language platforms in 2023 are subjected to multiphase qualitative and quantitative analyses. Based on these analyses, three key belief structures are identified: a preservation-positive structure, a forestry-positive structure and a compromise-seeking structure. These structures both reflect and challenge the established positions of the official Finnish forest discussion and, interestingly, reveal the importance of online discussions as an arena for critique and fundamental value-based debate.