Order from chaos: Deconstructing the interactions of multiple online stakeholders in NIMBY conflicts

The vigorous development of NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) projects is inevitable, while online conflicts caused by these projects enter a high incidence period. However, the behavioral patterns of online stakeholders in NIMBY conflicts have not been synthetically quantified. This research took the Maoming PX project as the case, crawled 66,831 related messages on Sina Weibo, combining topic extraction and network analysis to identify interactive networks and multi-stakeholder roles. Results reveal that authoritative users mainly issue event progress and education, while private users are more concerned about project risks, expressing their attitudes and suggestions. As for the user roles, results show a diverse set of stakeholder classifications during different conflict phases. Findings provide a retrospective evaluation in gauging different groups of actors from complex interactions and also provide valuable inputs to evidence-based policymaking to help authorities better under-stand the nuanced picture of social stability. Practitioners can utilize the findings to improve communication capabilities for future project conflicts.