The Challenge of the Digital Public Sphere: Finnish Experiences of the Role of Social Media in Participatory Planning

In this paper, we examine social media-based participation and public deliberation in land-use planning. We use the Deweyan theory of the public, the Habermasian theory of the public sphere, and the recent theories of the digital public sphere as our framework, asking what should be the relation of public planners to the digital public sphere: should they try to manage self-organising participation, or should public opinion formation be free from the influence of public authorities? The empirical part of the study reflects on this question by investigating Finnish planners’ experiences of the role of social media in planning in the light of two recent surveys.