Response strategies for community stakeholder engagement on social media: A case study of a large infrastructure project

Abstract

Social media offer new opportunities for project community stakeholder engagement due to its spatial and temporal independency. This study reveals implications for project stakeholder identification, assessment, and response strategies in the social media context. It analysed Facebook communication sequences in two cases related to establishing the Western Sydney International Airport. The analysis showed that existing stakeholder identification and assessment guidelines only apply to social media to some extent. Information about stakeholders and their concerns is limited. We suggest identifying and addressing thematic issues shared across stakeholders. Regarding possible response strategies, the project in the case study surprisingly often refrained from responding to community stakeholder comments, foregoing the opportunity to engage with community stakeholders and acknowledging supportive comments. We suggest that projects consciously apply an ‘always respond’ response strategy on social media and extend response strategies to cover engagement with an 'acknowledgement' response strategy.