The (Social) Science Tells Us: Environmental Movement Organisations and the Framing of Expertise

This thesis examines how environmental movement organisations frame expertise and the factors which influence this, to shed new light on the contestation of expertise at a time when challenges to institutional knowledge are an increasingly prominent feature of political rhetoric. Informed by sociological studies of expertise within science and technology studies, the thesis presents a theoretically informed framework for identifying and interpreting the framing of expertise in environmental disputes. The thesis presents a qualitative analysis of how two Victorian environmental movement organisations that sought to protect native forests from logging from 2017-2024 framed expertise and the factors that influenced this.