Social media for collaborative planning: A typology of support functions and challenges

Abstract

In recent years, the widespread use of social media has increasingly impacted planning practice and policy making. Although a growing body of literature examines the impact of social media on urban governance and planning, there is a lack of theoretical understanding on the extent to which social media can support collaborative planning. This study identifies a typology of support functions of social media: information sharing refers to one-way information flows from government to citizens or from individuals and organizations to a wide audience in real time; social networking is about the networking of individuals and organizations, perhaps crossing geographical boundaries for collective actions; citizen participation is related to different levels of citizen power that may be enhanced by social media; and communication is diverse, characterized by multimodal, interactive and mass self-communication in various online public spheres. These support functions can be employed to assist different phases and scales of collaborative planning. Nevertheless, there are several potential challenges of using social media in urban planning, including population bias, privacy concerns, information credibility, (self-)censorship, and opinion polarization. The integration of social media, digital tools and traditional participation methods can help to support more inclusive planning processes.