ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that social media is a powerful new platform that is better informed and better connected stakeholders. It is expanding the population of organizations and individuals who might be considered legitimate project stakeholders. The chapter focuses on technological innovations to the ways in which social media is (re)shaping mining and extractives (M&E) companies' community relations spheres and practices. It draws upon two years of social media data related to Australia's burgeoning Coal Seam Gas (CSG) industry to provide insights and recommendations about how, exactly, social media may be changing the community relations landscape for the M&E sector. The chapter proceeds by introducing the reader to Australia's controversial CSG industry, the source of social media case data. It explains Twitter and highlights its usage and the development of an Australian "Twittersphere" before proceeding to explain the findings of capturing, coding, and analyzing a database of almost one million Tweets, recorded over a 2-year period, 2014–2016.
