Presentation of
Article Summary
NURHAZMAN ABDUL AZIZ (WHA 140004)
AHMAD FAHMI FAIZA (WHA 140005)
WXGX6101 | 2014 SEMESTER 1
RESEARCH FOUNDATION IN COMPUTER SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA
Title of Article

Social media-based systems:
an emerging area of information systems
research and practice

By: Gohar Feroz Khan
School of Industrial Management,
Korea University of Technology and Education (KoreaTECH)
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Published in Scientometrics (2013) 95: 159-180
DOI 10.1007/s11192-012-0831-5
A little bit about this journal…
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Scientometrics
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ISSN: 0138-9130 (Print) 1588-2861 (Online)

Scientometrics is concerned with the quantitative features and
characteristics of science and scientific research. Emphasis is placed on
investigations in which the development and mechanism of science are
studied by statistical mathematical methods.

The journal publishes original studies, short communications, preliminary
reports, review papers, letters to the editor and book reviews on
scientometrics. Due to its fully interdisciplinary character, the journal is
indispensable to research workers and research administrators .

It provides valuable assistance to librarians and documentalists in
central scientific agencies, ministries, research institutes and
laboratories.
Objective about this article
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Review of Social media-based systems (SMS) & Information
System (IS) – total of 274 papers between 2003 - 2011
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Definition of SMS
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Comparison of SMS and older Information Systems.
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Findings of current SMS research.
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Discussion
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Implication
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Conclusion
Definition of SMS
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Social media-based systems (SMS)
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An example of a Social media-based systems (SMS)
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“an application of a wider range of social software and social media
phenomenon in organizational and non-organization context to facilitate every
day interactions”
The evolution of customer relationship management system like SalesForce,
TigerCRM and SugerCRM.
A couple of elements contribute to the SMS
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build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow
the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.

this is to achieve the business goals.
Comparison of SMS and older ISs.
IS research
Focus
Assumption / Scope
Informational Properties
Conventional IS
Technology;
Organization
Technology alone can bring efficiency and productivity in a work
environment
Bureaucratic; Technical
Socio-Technical IS
Technology;
Organization;
People
Interdependence among technological (e.g. devices, tools, and
techniques), social (knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values of
workers), and environmental (e.g. customers and suppliers relations
and the rules and regulations governing these relations) is required
for efficiency and productivity in a work environment. (Eg. Saleforces)
Bureaucratic; Formal;
Limited sharing; Tightly
controlled
Social mediabased systems
Application of a wider range of social software(or computing)and
social media phenomenon in an organizational and non-organization
context to facilitate timeliness, accuracy, and completeness of
information (Eg. Saleforces)
Organizational
social mediabased systems
Technology;
Organization;
People; Social
Media
Phenomenon
Joint optimization of technical, social, and environmental subsystem is
required and can be facilitated by embedding social media
phenomenon in a work environment to facilitate timeless, accuracy,
and completeness of information within formal or bureaucratic
arrangements (Eg. McAfee Enterprise 2.0)
Social; Informal; More
sharing greater value /
impact; boundary-less;
diverse; limited control
Personal social
media-based
systems
Technology;
People (Public);
Social Media
Phenomenon
Social media phenomena embodied systems utilized by ordinary
citizens to manage their personal and professional information timely,
accurately, and conveniently. (Eg. Wikis, Blogs, Facebook)
Social; Personal; More
sharing greater value /
impact; boundary-less;
diverse; no control
Findings of current SMS research
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Methodology used
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Article selection
– systematic literature review + social network techniques for data
analysis.
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the data was extracted from
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Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI- EXPANDED); Social Sciences
Citation Index (SSCI); Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)
database of the Web of Science (WoS).
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its reliable and stable nature among the sources currently available
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A total of 274 articles appeared in 53 journals
What research query was entered
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the following research query was entered in WoS database:
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Search Query (as of August 12, 2011) Topic = (‘‘social media’’ OR
‘‘social network analysis’’ OR ‘‘social network’’ Or ‘‘social network site’’
OR ‘‘social network system’’)
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Refined by: Web of Science Categories = (COMPUTER SCIENCE
INFORMA- TION SYSTEMS) AND Document Type = (ARTICLE) Time-span =
2003–2011. Databases = SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI.
The results: using systematic literature review

plays important role in the
development of a field
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Serve two purposes
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First, it may help
researchers analyze and
synthesize a well
established area using
an accumulated body of
existing research
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Secondly, it helps to
tackle and characterize
an emerging area or
issue that would benefit
from exposure to
potential theoretical
bases
From the results, they applied Social network Analysis
techniques

CLR are useful in revealing some general and visible characteristics
of a research field; however, they stand short in revealing hidden
structures and properties a research domain (Khan and Park 2011),
such as, keyword mapping and burst detection.

Therefore, they employed SNA technique (Wasserman and Faust
1994), alongside CLR, to reveal hidden characteristics of SMS
research (i.e. keyword mapping and burst detection) from network
point of view not visible otherwise
Findings of current SMS research
(cont)

Types of SMS research stream
1.
Organizational aspect
2.
Non-organizational aspect
3.
Technical aspect
4.
Social as a tool
Organizational aspect

The research stream deals with SMS in organizational context (i.e. OSMS). The
stream is visible in Fig. 2 (see stream 2 and 3 in Fig. 2 and in Table 5) by the burst
terms, for example, organization, business, competition, project, collaboration,
and coordination.

The research stream disuses OSMS issues at intra- and inter-organizational
organizational scale, for example, inter-firm networks over the web (Jin et al.
2008), inter-organizational systems and firm’s competiveness (Chi et al. 2008),
team work and collaboration (Yang and Tang 2004), competition and trust in
the online market (Bolton et al. 2008), enterprise social networking (Richter et al.
2011), web-based information system (Cai 2006), infor- mation flow and social
network of line-managers (Mackenzie 2003), management of virtual community
(Wang and Chen 2004), product selection behavior (Maicas et al. 2009), cultural
factors and information sharing in organizations (Shin et al. 2007), privacy (Liang
et al. 2011), social capital (Chow and Chan 2008; Lin and Huang 2009),
technology adoption (Lin and Huang 2009), trust in e-commerce environment
(Hwang and Yuan 2009), knowledge exchange (Lin and Chiou 2010), marketing
(Li et al. 2010), and tagging behavior (Angus et al. 2008).
Stream 2 & 3
Non-organizational aspect

The research stream discuses social information system from ordinary
citizen’s perspec-tive; mainly, the research stream discuses adoption
and use behavior (Hester 2011; Hsiao 2011; Lee et al. 2011; Yeh et al.
2011; Massari 2010; Sledgianowski and Kulviwat 2009; Wang and
Chiang 2009) of PSMS to manage their personal and professional
information,

for example, wikis, blogs, and social networking tools, such as, usage
of linked-in, Cyworld, and Facebook (see Fig. 2 stream 1 and Table
5) (Hsiao 2011; Lee et al. 2011; Yeh et al. 2011). For
Stream 1
Technical aspect

Technical stream of the SMS research looks into the technical
aspect of SMS in organizational and non-organizational context (see
Fig. 2 stream 5 and Tables 5, 6).

Researchers discuss issues, such as, design, architecture, and
algorithms (Alon et al. 2010; Rodriguez et al. 2006; Caverlee et al.
2010; Allen et al. 2010; Shekarpour and Katebi 2010; Shapira and
Zabar 2011) related to SMS, for example, clustering algorithms (BarYossef et al. 2006),
Stream 5
Table 6
Social as a tool

This research stream deals with the application of social network
analysis (SNA) (& techniques) as a tool to analyze different aspect
of a phenomenon within computer information system research
domain (see Fig. 2 stream 4 and Table 6).

For example, SNA is employed to analyze organizational and
individual collaborative social networks, such as, organizational
networks (Yang and Tang 2004; Long and Siau 2007), collaborative
and scientific networks (Oh et al. 2006; Li-chun et al. 2006), individual
networks (Truex et al. 2011), such as, authors citation networks
(Johnson and Oppenheim 2007), and editorial- board networks
(Malin and Carley 2007). Other
Stream 4
Table 6
Discussion

In this study, we tried to characterize SMS, as an emerging area of IS research using a
mixed approach (Khan and Park 2011).

Stream 1, was mostly dealing with organizational aspect of social media usage and
adoption within the information system context.

Stream 2, of the SMS research was dealing with non-organizational aspect of the social
media in the context of the information system research i.e. dealing with the adoption and
usage of social media systems.

Similarly, they found that stream 3 of the research was dealing with technical issues related
to social media usage in the context of information system research.
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Finally, stream 4, was concern with the application of social media related tools (Ackland
2009) to the analysis of the hidden phenomenon within the information system domain.
Concept of sociomation

proposed a distinction between socio-technical IS and SMS based
on the information perception, for example, the main characteristic
that distinguishes SMS from socio-technical IS (and conventional IS)
is the concept of sociomation.

the more sociomation is shared the greater value/ impact it will
have (e.g. the value/effect can be measured in terms of attracting
more followers in an online social space or in terms of having
greater socio-political impact on society or organizations).
Implications
(From the practitioners’ point of view)

this study calls for special considerations while using social media in
organizational settings,

for example, to take full advantage of social media, fundamental
principle/properties of sociomation (identified in this study) should be entertained
i.e. unlike the conventional and socio-technical IS where information is
bureaucratic, formal, bounded within the intranet, and tightly controlled by
organizations; in the social media context, information is social, informal, boundaryless (i.e. boundary is within the internet well beyond organizational network),
organizations has less control over it, and more sharing of information may lead to
higher value/impact. It must noted that they are not suggesting that SMS may/will
replace socio-technical IS, rather it will complement it. Socio-technical
Implications
(the researchers’ point of view)

this study identified and characterize an emerging research area that will bring in
revolutionary paradigms for IS research and practical use.

In this research, they identified the third wave in computing after conventional and
socio-technical IS (Bostrom and Heinen 1977; Briggs et al. 2010) that needs to explored
further in future research.
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For example, some key questions related to the value/impact of the sociomation need to be
answered in future research.
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For example, why some sociomation attract more attention or has more value/impact than
other? How
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How can we determine/measure the value/impact of sociomation?
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How the values of sociomation changes over time?
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Does it follow increasing or decreasing return principle? To
Limitations

The first and foremost is that they analyzed articles that were
indexed in WoS database only.


Thus, they were unable to include several other outlets, namely IS
conference proceedings, books, mini tracks, and some other journals,
which may important sources be of IS research, but are not ISI indexed.
A second limitation is that when retrieving our sample, they tried to
employ all the commonly-known keywords related to social media
phenomena; however, social is a fast evolving phenomenon, thus
we may have excluded some keywords not in our knowledge-base.
Conclusion

The author concluded that:
“unlike the conventional and socio-technical IS, in the SMS context,
information is social, informal, boundary-less has less control, and more
sharing of information may lead to higher value/impact.”