iNIMBY? The potential of automated social media bots to create echo chambers in the online participatory planning discourse

Online participatory planning processes are cheaper, easier, and may reach a broader audience than in-person techniques. However, they are also vulnerable to disruption from automated social bots. This research introduces a bespoke planning-oriented social bot, Urbanist Uma, to explore if and how social bots contribute to echo chambers that may influence planning processes. After four years on Twitter, Urbanist Uma had almost 250 followers and her Tweets had been viewed tens of thousands of times. The high level of homophily in Uma’s network demonstrates the need for planners to recognize both the opportunity and risk of the digital public sphere.