Social media as a new playing field for the governance of agro-food sustainability TM Stevens 1 , N Aarts 1 , CJAM Termeer 2 and A Dewulf 2 Social media bring various stakeholders of the agro-food system together into a new playing field. This article reveals the dynamics of this playing field and the ways in which this can influence the governance of agro-food sustainability. We delineate three pathways that highlight the ways in which social media can have implications for the governance of agro-food sustainability; firstly, Hypes on agro-food sustainability issues, secondly, opportunities for the self-organization of food movements, and thirdly, data for new forms of agro-food governance. We conclude that while mass self-communication on social media forms an emergent force that disrupts agro- food governance, it also generates data that forms a resource for powerful players to regain control. Addresses 1 Strategic Communication Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands 2 Public Administration and Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Corresponding author: Stevens, TM (tim.stevens@wur.nl) Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2016, 18:99–106 This review comes from a themed issue on Sustainability governance and transformation 2016: Informational governance and environmental sustainability Edited by Katrine Soma, Bertrum MacDonald, Paul Opdam and Catrien Termeer For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial Received 16 May 2015; Revised 27 November 2015; Accepted 27 November 2015 Available online 8th January 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.11.010 1877-3435/# 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Introduction Agro-food sustainability is a contentious theme on social media that pulls together farmers, citizen-consumers, businesses, politicians, journalists and other actors. Issues such as animal welfare, GMO and food safety generate high levels of social media activity. The rapid and fluid interaction on social media combined with high public concerns about the transparency and sustainability of the agro-food sector generates opportunities and challenges for different actors in the agro-food system. Since social media bring together commercial, political, and public interests in a new arena, with new roles and new rules, we consider social media to constitute an important new playing field in the governance of agro-food sustainability. It is yet unclear however, what dynamics are at play in this new field and in what ways these dynamics influence the governance of agro-food sustainability. Despite the rise of studies on social media and politics 1 this body of literature lacks integration and theoretical reflection to capture social media as a field of governance. Moreover, there is little research on social media in the agro-food domain specifically. This paper combines different strands of literature in order to infer the ways in which social media could influence the governance of agro-food sustainabili- ty. The results are presented in the form of three path- ways, which highlight how the interaction of players generates emergent dynamics that affect the governance of agro-food sustainability. Method and conceptual lens of the review The literature review for this paper was conducted at the interfaces of four fields: social media, governance, agro- food and sustainability (Figure 1a). With a list of key- words for each field we searched all overlapping areas. 2 Because of the limited number of studies at the intersec- tion of all areas, this review mainly applied the insights from social media literature to the domain of agro-food sustainability. To relate these two knowledge domains, insights from the two domains were coalesced to establish intersecting themes (Figure 1b). By congregating and differentiating the various roles of social media in the domain of agro-food sustainability, we identified three pathways of influence (Figure 1c). A pathway is not a corridor in which a chain of effects leads to governance outcomes, but a coalescence of social media activities that form a pattern in the way it implicates the governance of agro-food sustainability. Pathways allow us to synthesize literature, to provide concrete contextualized interpreta- tions, and to illustrate the dynamics at play in this new playing field of governance. Hence, we do not provide a detailed overview of the literature but highlight how the interactions of players bring about emergent phenomena in the governance of agro-food sustainability (Box 1). To further explain our method we have to clarify the conceptual lens through which the literature was reviewed. Governance refers to the interactive processes through which stakeholders enact and construct the roles 1 As an indication, an analysis of Scopus results shows that studies with ‘social media’ AND ‘politic* OR govern*’ increased with 692% from 2010 to 2013, in comparison to an increase of 9% on the same search without ‘social media’. 2 In total, 137 words were applied over 15 search queries on Scopus and Google Scholar to find results for each overlapping area. Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2016, 18:99–106