Social Media to Facilitate Public Participation in IA

Social media are web-based and mobile technologies that facilitate interaction between organizations, communities and individuals. Important characteristics are that the technologies are ubiquitous, communication instantaneous and that they enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, WordPress, and YouTube are just a few of the hundreds of applications that make participatory information sharing and social networking possible. These new social media are being used to organize events, communicate information, develop positions, solicit membership, distribute petitions, and share documents, photographs, and videos. Given the rapid adoption by citizens around the globe for a diversity of purposes, it is timely to ask what role social media is playing or could play in facilitating public participation in impact assessment. Since many projects are large, complex and controversial social media may be used to mobilize resistance. But it may also be used to distribute documents and prepare positions for hearings or written submissions and used during follow-up programming. Hence stakeholders on all sides of controversial projects might make use of these new forms of communication. This paper will consider how social media are being used and how it could be used in environmental, social and health impact assessment. We will focus on governance dilemmas and raise issues on good practices for public participation through social media