The use of social media in impact assessment: experiences among national infrastructure developers in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Social media plays an increasingly prominent role in the interaction between impact assessments and society. Impact assessment is thus becoming part of social networks that are claimed to be able to improve interaction between actors in impact assessment processes. By investigating the use of social media in impact assessment and planning processes of national linear infrastructure development, we explore how social media impinge on participatory practices and how the potential of social media is realized in the current use related to public participation processes. The study focuses on experiences among national developers working in road, rail, electricity, gas, and metro infrastructures in Denmark. The article shows that the current use of social media in public participatory practices is limited to branding and on-way communication and that the increasing use of social media in linear infrastructure planning gives rise to a variety of concerns among developers that are related to especially organizational cultures, perception of the target groups, and prioritization of resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• impact assessment
• linear infrastructures
• Denmark
• public participation

1. Introduction

With its stunning growth in popularity and number of users, social media is a direct concern for actors involved in decision-making, and therefore also for actors involved in impact assessment. This is due to social media’s potentials to shape opinion, mobilize conflicts or support, and enlighten or mislead numerous actors rapidly (Prenzel and Vanclay 2014; Boulianne 2015; Larsen et al. 2015; Jiang et al. 2016; Sinclair et al. 2017). Social media is argued to change negotiations and power struggles in planning processes by allowing interactions between new actors in altered time and space dimensions (Green 2002). As examples, politicians are found to get updates from opinion formers through social media before and during town council meetings (Smidstrup 2014), and social media may make ‘the emergence possible of sometimes influential NGOs which in reality present only one person or one company’ (Meuleman 2015, p. 13).

It is suggested that social media have a direct influence on citizens’ participation in civic and political life (Boulianne 2015). Other studies (e.g. Kenski and Stroud 2006) find a correlation between Internet use and political efficacy, knowledge, and participation, even when taking factors such as sociodemographic variables and political interest into account. Social media is also influencing the demographics of public participation by attracting more young people, who can otherwise be difficult to engage (Clark et al. 2013), whereas senior citizens who do not feel comfortable with new technologies are somewhat discouraged from participating (Kleinhans et al. 2015). The mobilization is not unproblematic among other reasons because social media contains various kinds of gatekeeping processes in which agents are filtering information (Segerberg and Bennett 2011), users of social media may be exposed to mobilizing information without having actively searched for it (Tang and Lee 2013), and social media can exacerbate post-factual claims (Fischer 2017).

Social media are increasingly used in impact assessment and planning processes as a means of informing and sharing information between actors (Fredericks and Foth 2013; Williamson and Parolin 2013; Sinclair et al. 2017). The use of social media therefore affects and is affected by practices of public participation that have been matured for decades (e.g. Healey 2006). With its relatively new societal role, we need to better understand how the use of social media relates to these practices of public participation. In an impact assessment context, Sinclair et al.(2017) emphasise ‘the need to share experiences regarding the issue of social media, especially among government and proponents, to help establish best practices for its use’ (p. 155). Kleinhans et al. (2015) argue that there is a lot of wishful thinking and little empirically validated knowledge about social media in planning.

This article adds to the empirical knowledge base on how the increasing use of social media impinges on practices of public participation. As the emergent field of research into social medias´ roles in planning shows, there is much potential in the use of social media in public participation processes. However, there is a need to know more about how these potentials are realized, how social media contributes to attaining the purposes of public participation, and what barriers exist that hinders the realization of social media’s potential.

The article investigates these questions by exploring experiences and views of social media in impact assessment and planning among national infrastructure developers in Denmark. The developers are all developing linear infrastructure on a national scale, and the projects investigated here are, among other things, characterized by high costs, crossing administrative, and geographical boundaries, having negative local impacts but most often broader societal benefits, and are based on a highly technocratic modelling and documentation of needs (Lyhne 2012). Linear national infrastructure development is therefore expected to be an interesting type of project from a social media perspective, as the planning is likely to give rise to a range of debates on impacts, routing, compensation, etc. We use Danish developers’ experiences in order to understand current practices of using social media in public participation as well as barriers for different uses of social media. Denmark is interesting as a case with regard to social media practices in impact assessment, since it is generally known for having a tradition of consensus planning (Böhme 2002; Lyhne et al. 2016), and since the public serves an important role in the quality control of environmental assessments (Lyhne et al. 2015). Furthermore, social media is widely used in Denmark. Among the 5.7 million Danes, 67% use Facebook, 24% use LinkedIn, 10% use Twitter, and 24% use Instagram (Statistica 2017).

The aim of this article is to contribute to the sharing of experiences needed for understanding the use of social media in impact assessment and infrastructure planning and investigate both the potentials and challenges that occur when coupling the use of social media and purpose of public participation in infrastructure planning. The article unfolds as follows: First, an overview of literature focusing on the use of social media in impact assessment and planning as well as obstacles is presented. From this overview a framework for understanding the Danish case is derived. Second, the methodology and data collection on Danish experiences is described. Third, the experiences with and views of social media in national linear infrastructure planning in Denmark are analysed. The analysis focuses on three aspects: 1) how the different social media platforms are used by developers and to what purpose, 2) the nature of interactions with the public through social media, and 3) challenges and future potentials for using social media in the infrastructure planning. Finally, the results are discussed in terms of how social media impinge on practices of public participation among the developers of linear infrastructures in Denmark.

2. Social media and the practices of public participation in impact assessment and planning

The literature on the role of social media in impact assessment and planning is presented with specific attention to the different applications of social media as well as the challenges and potentials that the use of social media offers to current practices related to public participation. These two aspects provide a frame for interpreting the Danish experiences with social media in national linear infrastructure planning and the developers’ views of it.

2.1 Use of social media in impact assessment and planning

The literature outlines a range of different practices related to the use of social media, with different rationales among the actors typically involved in impact assessment processes.

Developers and authorities are found to use social media to provide stakeholders with greater and faster access to project documentation and information (Sinclair et al. 2017), but there are some indications that social media is primarily used by authorities and developers as a tool for one-way communication rather than dialogue (Sinclair et al. 2017). Other uses of social media in impact assessment and planning relates to data collection, communication of updates, gathering of ideas, and facilitation of dialogue between stakeholders (Fredericks and Foth 2013; Sinclair et al. 2017). Examples are shown by Jiang et al. (2016) who demonstrate the potential of social media data in assessing and monitoring public opinion on large infrastructure projects, Odparlik and Köppel (2013) who show that social media is used to communicate new updates in 16 of 38 cases of environmental assessment registries, Illsley et al. (2014) who mention social media as one of the good examples of ‘innovative approaches to gathering ideas and views’ in strategic environmental assessment, and Afzalan and Muller (2014) find that social media has some potential for facilitating dialogue among actors and can assist stakeholders in examining the validity of discussions in spatial environmental policymaking. Others mention the possibility to get swift feedback on ideas through ‘Likes and don’t likes’ (Fredericks and Foth 2013). Social media is furthermore seen as a relevant media for citizen co-production, providing a more active role for citizens in terms of public services (Linders 2012).

Literature also points to the potential for using social media to engage citizens such as younger people, who do not usually participate in planning processes, and thereby reducing a well-known problem of engaging this group in participation processes (Fredericks and Foth 2013).

Whereas the literature referenced above primarily views social media from a developer or planning perspective, it is also evident that the public, for instance NGOs, uses social media to promote their concerns in planning processes. As an example, a study of 73 Facebook sites about wind turbine projects in Denmark found that opponents to wind turbine projects dominated the discussions and succeeded in spreading their concerns to other users (Borch et al. 2017).

In a theoretical perspective, the current use of social media in planning and impact assessment seems to generally correspond to the level of ‘informing’ in Arnstein’s (1969) well-known ladder of participation. At the same time, the claimed potentials of social media seem to support all levels of participation in the ladder. To investigate how the actual use of social media in the practice of public participation in infrastructure planning corresponds to the potentials of social media as well as the purposes for public participation, the framework of O’Faircheallaigh (2010) will be applied. O’Faircheallaigh (2010), like Arnstein (1969), also differentiates between levels of participation. He outlines three different levels of public participation; obtaining input from the public, sharing decision-making and distributing power. Furthermore, the practice of obtaining input can have different objectives according to O’Faircheallaigh (2010): Providing information to the public and filling information gaps, which are one-way communication practices and creating opportunities for the public to question information and facilitating shared problem-solving and learning which are dialogue-oriented practices. The distinction between one-way communication and dialogue-oriented practices are applied in the article. When addressing dialogue-oriented practices concerning social media, we are not dealing with a face-to-face personal situation, but an interaction which takes place though written or visual media.

Furthermore, since research in public participation shows convincing evidence pointing to the fact that early involvement provides a greater opportunity for the public to influence the planning (e.g. Beierle and Crayford 2002), special attention is paid to the timing of social media-use in the planning process.

2.2 Obstacles connected to social media in impact assessment and planning

The use of social media in impact assessment and planning is not without obstacles. Sinclair et al. (2017) point to the fact that government institutions and proponent organizations have little control over their messages on social media sites, hereunder who has access to it and how it is used. Others emphasize the political implications that utilizing social media could have, as the use of social media is embedded in the political sphere (Fredericks and Foth 2013). In a study of ICT and learning, Redecker et al. (2010) illustrate the challenges related to Internet access and the lack of ICT skills among the public and find a need for institutional changes and the development of new skills among the sender of information.

In addition to the various kinds of gatekeeping processes that social media contains (Segerberg and Bennett 2011), Bode (2012) shows how information retrieved from social media has also been filtered through existing networks. These processes on social media are complex and invisible to the users, which makes it complicated for all actors to assess the validity and reliability of information. The uncertain quality of information complicates the use of social media in an impact assessment and planning perspective.

In terms of impact assessment, Sinclair et al. (2017) suggest that impact assessment processes and social media are somewhat ‘intrinsically incompatible’, since impact assessments typically include long reports of detailed information, whereas social media ‘seems to work best as “Twitter-type” communication’ (p. 154). A similar incompatibility could be proposed in terms of the mismatch between the lengthy consultation periods in impact assessment processes and the expectations of swift replies on social media. Whether social media is, in fact, incompatible with impact assessment it is something that is yet to be established with some certainty. The barriers discussed here indicate that it might be, while the potentials found in other studies point to the opposite (Illsley 2014; Jiang et al. 2016). This article adds to this discussion by investigating how barriers influence the utilization of social media’s potential in impact assessment.

3. Methods and data

The study of the use of social media among national infrastructure developers in Denmark is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The quantitative data collection was done by means of a survey and served as a point of departure for interviews with developers. These methods were supplemented by scrutinizing the developers’ social media profiles. The participants and the three methods are described in the following.

3.1 About the case materials

In this article, the national infrastructure development in Denmark is delimited to linear infrastructures in the energy sector and transport sector. Within the transport sector, the Danish Road Directorate is the only national developer of roads, the state-owned railway enterprise BaneDanmark is the only national developer of railways, and the public-owned Metroselskabet is the only developer of metros. All three developers participated in the study. The transport sector in Denmark also includes the state-owned organization for bridges and tunnels Sund og Bælt Holding A/S, but they declined to participate in the study. Within the energy sector, the responsibility for developing the electricity and gas infrastructure is assigned to the state-owned enterprise Energinet.dk, which is also part of the study. The four developers are, by request, anonymized in the analysis.

The broad range of social media is delimited to the most used platforms that offer opportunities for interacting with stakeholders: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. These are also the most widely used social media platforms in Denmark at the time of the study.

3.2 Quantitative data collection on hits and clicks

The data collection includes a short survey related to the use of different social media platforms and a collection of quantitative data aimed at measuring the extent of the interaction with the public through social media. The infrastructure developers were asked to provide numbers on total reach, post clicks, reactions, comments, and shares for each platform as well as the number of followers in order to assess the volume of the interaction taking place through social media. The numbers were to be stated for the infrastructure project with least interaction, the infrastructure project with most interaction, and an estimated average for all infrastructure projects.

The short survey also involved questions regarding each organization’s intention with social media in terms of interaction with the public as well as the location of responsibility for the social media sites and the workload on administering and interacting on social media within the organization. One representative from each of the four participating infrastructure developers answered the survey. The data collection took place during May 2017.

3.3 Interviews about experiences

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each developer organization as a face-to-face two-hour interview with infrastructure project employees and/or communication employees. Two to three employees participated in each interview. The total number of interviewees for the study was nine. The interviews’ point of departure was in the quantitative overview of interactions on social media based on the survey. The aim of the interviews was to achieve a deeper understanding of the developers’ practices, motivations, and concerns related to social media in infrastructure development. The interviews were conducted in June 2017 and were recorded and transcribed. As a first step in the analysis, all interviews were structured according to conflicting and consistent themes identified in the interviews, highlighting the themes which the developers agreed and disagreed upon.

3.4 Analysis of social media sites

Finally, the four developers’ social media profiles were scrutinized in order to assess:

1. How active the developers were, based on the average number of posts per month during the existence of their profiles.

2. How much interaction took place on the platforms between citizens and the developers, based on the extent of questions, comments, answers, and dialogue connected to each post.

3. The nature of interaction between developers and citizens based on how and when the developers, for example, answered questions, responded to critical or positive comments, and how the citizens responded to each other’s comments.

This scrutiny of the social media sites supplemented the other data collection but also served as a validation of the provided data and interview statements. The data collection took place during the period April–May 2017.

4. Analysis of social media’s role in the practice of public participation

The analysis focuses on three aspects of social media practices related to public participation in infrastructure planning: 1) how the different social media platforms are used by developers and to what purpose; 2) The nature of the interactions with the public through social media platforms; and 3) Views on challenges and future potentials for using social media in the infrastructure planning.

4.1 Current practices and motivations for using social media in infrastructure planning

The four developers included in the study are evidently at rather different stages of implementing social media in the planning process. Table 1 shows an overview of which media platforms are used by the developers in the planning phase. When it comes to the most well-known media platforms, three out of four developers use them sometimes or always, which indicates a rather widespread use of social media in infrastructure planning. However, it is evident that there are considerably different strategies among the developers regarding the use of social media. As illustrated by Table 1, Developer D’s use of social media differs significantly from the practices of the other three developers in the sense that they are yet to implement social media in their planning practices.

Table 1. Extent of use of different social media platforms among the four developers.

	Developer A	Developer B	Developer C	Developer D
Facebook	Always	Sometimes	Sometimes	No
Twitter	Always	Sometimes	Sometimes	No
LinkedIn	Always	Always	No	No
YouTube	Always	Sometimes	Sometimes	No
Instagram	No	No	No	No

Note: Question: ‘Which social media platforms do you use in the infrastructure planning? (Please consider both the process and implementation).’

According to the interviewees, the hesitation to implement social media for Developer D and to some extent Developer B and C is not connected to using the platforms per se but to using them for external purposes in planning processes. When asked about the extent to which social media is used for other purposes than specific infrastructure planning projects, the use of social media is more widespread. This includes Developer D, who does not use social media in the infrastructure planning processes directly.

The overview of the nature of developers’ use of different social media platforms in Table 2 suggests certain similarities between the developers. The most dialogue-oriented platforms are Facebook and Twitter, which both provides opportunities for writing comments or questions that can be answered by developers though written feed-back. Out of the two, Facebook is perceived by the developers as being the most dialogue-oriented platform. It is used for asking and answering questions from the public as well as providing information. In addition, some developers occasionally use Facebook to gain information about opposing citizen groups and gauge the public mood. Twitter is most frequently used by the developers in the operational phase as a one-way communication channel to announce delays in train services, traffic accidents, maintenance, etc. or to announce new strategic initiatives. The predominant perception among the developers seems to be that the primary target groups for Twitter are politicians and the press. Some developers argue, however, that some dialogue does take place on Twitter, as it provides the opportunity to ask and answer questions. LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram are to a lesser extent perceived as dialogue-oriented, but some interaction still takes place. LinkedIn is primarily used for recruitment purposes and the interactions taking place there is limited. There are opportunities for commenting and liking posts, but they are used to a very limited extent, presumably because the platform targets planning professionals and not the broader public. YouTube is used for a multitude of purposes which are, however, primarily one-way communication. Videos are occasionally used for describing projects in the construction phase, operational phase, and even in the hearing phase. The videos posted on YouTube are used for information purposes, branding, internal communication aimed at new employees, and recruitment. Lastly, Instagram is primarily a branding platform and one developer describes it as the aesthetical side of the branding initiative. It does however play a limited role in the planning process.

Table 2. Uses of social media platforms among the four developers.

Social media platform	Respondent	When is it used in the planning process?	Primary objectives	Activity: Average monthly posts
Facebook	Developer A	Generally not project specific	Limited interaction with users, but occasionally answering direct and not personal questions. Information about what they are doing and branding. Monitoring agendas in the public by following citizen groups – not systematically.	8
	Developer B	Construction phase or generally not project specific	Uses it to enter into a dialogue with the citizens in the construction phase. Publishes competitions, technical news, and everyday stories.	17
	Developer C	Construction phase or generally not project specific	Posts news about projects, asks the public questions. Only direct questions from the public are answered.	14
	Developer D	Hearing phase	Follows certain citizen groups in certain projects to gauge the mood in the public, but not systematically.	0
Twitter	Developer A	Operational phase	Aimed at politicians and press. Communicates major events, delays, and the like.	23
	Developer B	Operational phase	Information regarding delays and the like.	417
	Developer C	Operational phase or generally not project specific	Uses it as a place to brand the company and tell the good stories, or offers specific information regarding projects. This happens through ‘super spokespersons’. Also information regarding traffic, delays, and accidents.	121
	Developer D	Operational phase or generally not project specific	To reach journalists and politicians – not used by citizens. Promotes new initiatives, projects etc. And uses it for crises communication regarding blackouts and the like (used rarely).	17
LinkedIn	Developer A	Generally not project specific	Uses it for recruitment. Employee profiles, working environment.	1
	Developer B	Generally not project specific	Uses it for recruitment.	9
	Developer C	Generally not project specific	Uses it for professional postings and pictures and features of employees.	11
	Developer D	Generally not project specific	Uses it for recruitment.	13
YouTube	Developer A	Construction phase	Publishes information regarding projects.	1,4
	Developer B	Construction phase or generally not project specific	Publishes information regarding projects and features involving staff members.	1,7
	Developer C	Construction phase or generally not project specific	Used for branding, information regarding their work, information about specific projects in the construction phase.	0,8
	Developer D	Hearing phase and operational phase or generally not project specific	Internal communication. Requirement in EU-sponsored projects to report on results. Recruitment videos. ‘How do we do…’ – a supplement to their words in the public participation processes.	0,8
Instagram	Developer A	Generally not project specific	Branding and pictures taken by employees and others.	6
	Developer B	Generally not project specific	Recruits famous ‘Instagrammers’ to take pictures of the infrastructure. Used to promote the esthetical dimension, is aimed at the young and staff.	3
	Developer C	n/a	n/a	n/a
	Developer D	n/a	n/a	n/a

Note: The activity is measured by the average number of posts per month during the existence of their profile (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook) or during the past year (LinkedIn).

The developers’ activities on the different social media platforms (Table 2) correspond to the pattern suggested in Table 1 and support the conclusion that there is a large diversity in the extent to which the developers use social media. It seems that once developers get past the initial barriers, they are more likely to using social media on a regular basis. For instance, Developer B is using most of the social media platforms and is also, on average, the most active on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In contrast to that, Developer D is using the fewest of the social media platforms and is also the least active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. This suggests that hands-on experience plays an important role in breaking down barriers for using social media in the planning process.

All five social media platforms are primarily used from the hearing phase and onwards in the planning process. Hence, social media is not applied in the idea and planning phase, and, in the hearing phase, the platforms are only used as a somewhat passive supplement to a formal hearing process. The primary objectives for all developers when using social media are primarily one-way information and branding and, to a lesser extent, dialogue. Developer A and B both stress that one of the advantages of social media is that the organization has an opportunity to show its human face: ‘We might be developer and we are making noise and we are an authority, but we are also people’ (interviewee, Developer A). Despite their focus on providing a personal and speedy response through social media, the developers are generally hesitant to enter into personal issues concerning specific cases in the public space as one developer notes: ‘We cannot process individual cases in the public space’ (interviewee, Developer A). And it is a general perception among the developers that the interaction through social media cannot and should not replace the face-to-face dialogue between citizens and planners. This is, the interviewees argue, because citizens are different and have different needs in the involvement process. Therefore, the dialogue is typically restricted to writing questions and giving written answers of a general character.

The developers’ practice of using social media for branding and one-way information in the infrastructure planning process is connected to the developers’ motivations for implementing social media in the planning process. As illustrated in Table 3, the primary motivations are exactly information provision and visibility. Interactional motivations such as collecting local knowledge as an input to either the planning or environmental impact assessment process and supplementing the public hearing process are secondary aims or are not important to the developers.

Table 3. Frequency of aims with social media in the infrastructure planning among the four developers.

	The primary aim	A secondary aim	Not important	Don’t know
Provide access to information regarding the process	3	0	0	1
Be visible	3	0	0	1
Provide an opportunity to ask us questions	2	1	0	1
Collect local knowledge	0	3	0	1
Supplement public hearing	0	1	1	2

Aside from the motivations investigated in the survey study, the developers point to motivations such as:

• Being accessible to the public

• Having the opportunity to deflate factually incorrect myths

• Branding themselves and having a platform for displaying their successful initiatives

• Reaching other target groups than the ones usually involved through participatory methods such as formal gatherings and written hearings

All developers acknowledge that social media has the potential to reach a part of the public that traditional public participation methods often do not engage, such as the younger population. One developer explains: ‘Personally, I believe that you would reach other types of people compared to methods we use today. At public hearings, it is a certain kind of citizen who attends’ (interviewee, Developer A) referring to the dominance of older, well-established males.

4.2 The nature of interactions between developers and the public through social media

Having discussed how and why the infrastructure developers use the different social media platforms, the following section discusses the nature of the interaction between developers and citizens that takes place on the different social media platforms. Because, even though developers primarily use social media for one-way communication, an abundance of interactions still takes place. Many of them are initiated by the citizens.

The platforms that reach the most citizens judged by the number of followers are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (see Table 4). However, it should be noted that the real reach is presumably much larger, since people who are not following the profiles can still access posts.

Table 4. Number of followers on each social media platform.

	Developer A	Developer B	Developer C	Developer D
Facebook	1,066	19,561	13,213	n/a
Twitter	1,408	6,322	52,000	1,604
LinkedIn	19,948	27,328	3,770	12,485
YouTube	440	530	436	288
Instagram	535	1,541	n/a	n/a

As suggested earlier, interaction primarily takes place on Facebook and Twitter, and, to a limited extent, Instagram. The interviewees see LinkedIn as a forum in which citizens primarily tag each other to direct friends’ attention to job adverts. YouTube is seen as a media in which citizens most often view the videos posted by the developers but very rarely interact. The two platforms are therefore not discussed further in this section.

The interactions taking place on Instagram are mostly of a friendly and positive character and the space is to a large extent free of conflict. It focuses on aesthetics or good stories that can be told through a picture. The interaction primarily takes place by citizens liking pictures. There are very few comments on the pictures and they are often directed at the ‘Instagrammer’ who has taken the picture on behalf of the developers rather than at the developers. In addition, judged by the number of followers (Developer B has 1,541 followers and Developer A has 535 followers, Table 4), the reach is rather limited compared to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Apart from developer D’s profile, the scrutiny of the social media sites shows that the interactions taking place on Twitter are also sparse. It is interesting to observe that the same posts regarding, for example, servicework or delays meet limited critique on Twitter compared to the reactions on Facebook. The obvious explanation is that the 140-word limit that is put on the posts (at the time of data collection) and answers on Twitter discourages elaborate inputs and discussions. What sets Developer D’s profile apart from the remaining three is that their profile is almost exclusively directed at professional companies, organizations, politicians, and journalists. This is presumably because Developer D, in contrast to the other developers, rarely uses their Twitter profile for service information. This means that their information regarding projects, new initiatives, and developments is not drowned out by tweets regarding delays, malfunctions, and other immediate information, which is the case with the other three developers.

Facebook is by far the platform where the most interaction between developers and citizens takes place. Citizens use the opportunity to interact with the infrastructure developers on Facebook in a variety of different ways. They pose questions regarding specific road or rail stretches and stations, offer positive comments to posts regarding new initiatives taken by the developers, help spread messages sent by the developers by tagging other Facebook friends, or offer suggestions for improvements based on personal experience and local knowledge that can potentially be rather useful for the developers if utilized properly. The scrutiny of the developers’ social media platforms indicates that interactions taking place on Facebook are more confrontational and critical compared to the other social media platforms. Complaints regarding nuisances caused by delays, construction work, etc. are frequently posted on the developers’ Facebook sites, and because the only opportunity for citizens to express these complaints on the developers’ Facebook page is in connection with posts made by the developers, critical comments that are unrelated to the subject of the post appear on a regular basis. These complaints are handled in different ways by the developers. Developer B prioritizes answering every inquiry and complaint, and so does Developer C to a lesser extent, whereas Developer A only responds to general clarifying questions and never comments on critical statements. The interviews indicate that the observed response strategies are deliberate. Developer A explains their approach of not commenting on critical statements with it being a trial period where they are in the process of assessing the amount of resources necessary to allocate to the initiative. However, both Developer A and B also remark that they do not have to respond to every comment, since the citizens also respond to each other’s questions as well as critique and, in doing so, carry out a form of self-policing, which saves the developers some resources. One developer remarks: ‘Right now there is this atmosphere that it is embarrassing to be opposed to the project, so if someone posts some sort of comment, they are quickly corrected’ (interviewee, Developer B). This socially constructed dictation of right and wrong and standards for communication among the visitors on social media sites is one of the aspects that underlines the fact that social media used in planning and impact assessment differs significantly from traditional communication forms, where developers are used to being able to control the message they send and to some extent the reactions in deliberative forums. This is not possible on interactive media platforms such as Facebook.

4.3 Views on barriers and future practices

As suggested by the analysis, the occurrence of interaction between developers and citizens through social media platforms is rather limited when it comes to the planning phase of infrastructure projects. The interviews provided a more detailed understanding of different barriers and challenges that the developers experience in utilizing the potentials of social media from the beginning to the end of an infrastructure development process. The interviews suggest barriers related to social media such as: loss of control, lack of resources and competences, mismatch between the target group of social media and the target group of the planning, problems regarding privacy, organizational culture, lack of strategy and working routines, and difficulty in building relationships between the developers and the citizens. Of these barriers, the issues concerning control, resources, and mismatch between target groups seem to be the most dominant barriers for all four developers.

The issue of control refers to the developers not being able to control the debates in deliberative forums when these are expanded through different social media platforms. In general, social media is perceived among developers as not being suitable for discussing professional topics. Instead, they are searching for other tools that can support citizen debate. For instance, one developer introduced the idea of developing project-based websites, where citizens would get information about certain projects and could have the opportunity to ask questions: ‘We think, and we may not be correct, that it will allow us to control the dialogue on professional and technical content’ (interviewee, Developer C). Among other things, the developers fear that myths will arise and be powered by the debate sites on, for example, Facebook. They also fear that social media platforms will give too much space to negative comments, thereby creating an echo chamber where citizens are only subjected to one side of the debate because the developers themselves lack the resources and tools to control factually incorrect myths, facilitate a proper tone in the debate, or provide sufficient information and arguments for their projects. One developer remarks:

Certain project leaders are nervous that they would end up using way too much time on something that would not contribute with much. This is combined with a nervousness that it will generate conflict and trouble that is not particularly constructive and that it would be the critics that would use such a channel to complaint. (interviewee, Developer D)

However, other developers have experienced that the citizens participating on social media not only criticize but also exercise self-policing by correcting incorrect statements from other citizens or answering each other’s questions, thereby sharing a task that the developers consider to be theirs alone. Developers’ understanding of ‘factually incorrect myths’ can be a problematic term in the sense that it implies the acceptance of objective facts. In this regard, we limit ourselves in this paper to stating that what is here referred to as ‘factually incorrect myths’ is the instances where the facts that the planners hold to be obvious truths are challenged by members of the public.

The barrier created by lack of resources and competences in the field of social media relates to the fact that the developers have not prioritized resources for social media communication and have only limited resources for communication in general. The general perception among the developers is that social media requires constant attention because citizens expect a speedy response, preferably in real time. When asked what concerns him about introducing social media in the planning, one developer answered: ‘Well it’s the things about having to answer so quickly. Facebook for example is a place where there is access 24–7 and therefore it might seem strange if we only answer between 9 and 10 am’ (interviewee, Developer C). Furthermore, social media is a new field for many of the planning professionals that require a new kind of expertise. Therefore, they lack competences and experience within the field. This acts as a barrier for implementing social media in the planning process, since the planning professionals are unsure about their own and the organization’s ability to handle an unknown situation on the social media. In fact, the majority of the developers state that they are sure they do not have the ability to handle social media.

The third most dominant barrier that was uncovered in the interviews is that the developers find that the group of citizens they usually interact with is not the right target group for social media. There is a general consensus among the four developers that especially the older population, who reside outside the major cities, will not respond well to social media. According to the developers, social media is best suited for densely populated areas, where many people are affected by their projects at the same time.

In addition, the direct interactions that take place between the individual citizens and the developers connected to the infrastructure planning often concern private issues, such as the impacts from new infrastructure to the individual’s private property or issues of compensation. These are subjects the developers find unsuitable for public debate and better fitted for personal face-to-face interaction. This is a contributing factor to why some of the interviewed developers assume that social media can never replace the direct interaction with citizens. Furthermore, some developers worry that the public nature of social media might cause the citizens to feel exposed if they approach the developers with private issues.

The last barriers emerging from the interviews are internal barriers that concern the organizational culture, strategy, and work routines. According to the developers, if the social media venture is to be successful, it is important that the organization is ready for the change towards using social media and supports the initiative. It is also perceived to be important that there is a good cooperation between the communication unit and project level inside the organization. One of the developers remarks that, besides a lack of resources, the most dominant barrier for them to implement social media in the planning is a widespread scepticism in the organization. She states: ‘We are perhaps a bit slow when it comes to the newest trends and perhaps also a bit sceptical by nature. I don’t know if it is due to our area of expertise, but we don’t like to experiment too much’ (interviewee, Developer D). The interviewee also argues that the character of the organization contrasts social media’s more emotional character: ‘It’s a very objective organization, so emotional outbursts such as “likes” are risky. I think it is a little daring’ (interviewee, Developer D). Because of this inherent traditionalism that can be detected with many of the developers, the incentives for introducing social media in the planning process must be rather strong for the organization to venture into the social media arena. Aside from making the decision to do so, implementing social media in the planning also requires the development of a proper strategy and work routines, and this presents yet another barrier for the developers because it requires knowledge and expertise not present in the organization. Therefore, the developers express problems with, for example, integrating the social media communication in the planning process, identifying when it makes sense to use it, and what sort of stories should be posted.

Despite the reluctance to enter into dialogue with citizens through social media, it is however an area that all the developers are keen to develop and see as a potential in their future practices. One developer remarks: ‘One area where it is relevant, not Facebook, but something else, is where you can debate something about the trajectory and what an environmental impact assessment should contain. This would be beneficial for us’ (interviewee, Developer C). Another finds that the gathering of data about nature as part of the environmental impact assessment process is an area where it makes sense to involve the public through social media, because to him it seems less intrusive to contact them through these platforms than the traditional ones such as letters and telephone.

5. Discussion and conclusion

The analyses have provided an interesting insight into how social media impinge on practices of public participation among the developers of linear infrastructures in Denmark. Social media is seen by developers to provide benefits for participation in terms of branding and information provision in impact assessment and planning processes in the current practice, although there are considerable differences in their views on required resources and how to handle the importance of the political implications. This diversity seems greater than other studies of practice (e.g. Fredericks and Foth 2013), which might indicate a time of change in the Danish infrastructure planning.

With reference to O´Faircheallaigh´s (2010) framework, the use of social media is predominantly limited to reaching the purpose of public participation that has to do with branding and provision of information. Whereas participatory practices that have the purpose of sharing decision-making power or distributing power to the public are absent. Hence, the analyses support the claim by Sinclair et al. (2017) that social media is primarily a tool used for one-way communication. This also shows that the claimed potentials of social media in regard to reaching different purposes of public participation related to, e.g. gathering ideas (Illsley et al. 2014) or facilitating co-production (Linders 2012) are unrealized at this point in Danish infrastructure planning.

The analyses suggest that the use of social media related to public participation is highly dependent on the developers’ organizational culture. The ‘youngest’ developer with the least consolidated practices seems most open to the possibilities of social media, whereas the developer most focussed on legal issues is the least open to social media. This is somewhat in line with a quote from an informant in Fredericks and Foth’s study (2013) arguing that ‘tools don’t change cultures as they will be integrated into the existing culture of the organisation’ (p. 251). This cultural reluctance may be reinforcing itself as insufficient prioritization of resources for social media ventures that results in negative experiences that again support the reluctance to use social media actively for engaging the public.

Whereas social media is found to involve considerable potentials in terms of engaging citizens who do not participate often and supplement other public participation efforts in impact assessment and planning process, there seems to be a great need for exploring how the use of social media can be meaningfully adopted in practices of public participation to deal with the identified concerns related to the use of social media. Some of the challenges identified by the Danish developers need to be better understood before suggesting ways to handle the barriers. Some challenge such as disputes over validity are challenges that the developers also encounter in real life and they are as such not unique to social media interactions. Others, however, especially the challenge of navigating in social media in line with governance principles of legitimacy, accountability, and fairness (e.g. Graham et al. 2003) seem to require considerable attention from research and practice. Hence, there are challenges in the adoption of social media in infrastructure planning, but the empirical findings do not support the claim by Sinclair et al. (2017) that social media and impact assessment should be intrinsically incompatible.

Understanding the use of social media from the perspective of infrastructure developers is one important part of developing a holistic understanding of the role of social media in impact assessment and planning: A holistic understanding requires studies of authorities’, citizens’, NGOs’, and other actors’ views and uses of social media. This could, for example, be approached by following the multiple users of social media along the line of specific infrastructure projects, uncovering dynamic aspects of types of interactions, and changing discourses over time.

The article has contributed to the call for the sharing of experiences by Sinclair et al. (2017); however, the diversity of rationales and experiences identified in the Danish infrastructure context indicates a need for a considerable amount of empirical and conceptual research before context- and culture-sensitive best practices on social media can be developed. It seems necessary to explore opportunities and challenges in social media in impact assessment and planning practice through disciplines such as organizational studies and political culture, as well as by exploring how to target socio-geographic and project characteristics in social media strategies.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Danish ForskEL programme under Grant 12130. Thanks to the developers for an open discussion about experiences with and future use of social media.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ForskEL [12130];