Business Processes and Social Media in contemporary IS research

The expansive usage of social media in organisations in recent years has increased research in the field. Due to the nature of social media as a research topic that is studied in diverse contexts, there is an urge for an enacted contemporary literature review to frame the scope of social media in this context. Nowadays social media is on the agenda of many organisations. Many CEOs in their effort to find ways to offer their organisation beneficial solutions are interested in how they can take advantage from social media. Ultimately the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the research direction of social media in IS research. This literature review is based on selected papers from top IS journals and conferences. The classification of the papers is based on the business processes in which social media are applied and classified according to their business level they belong. The findings indicate that the attention of social media in IS literature has mainly been directed towards social media usage by organisations in marketing processes and less towards others such as Investing and Disaster Management. It shows also that the majority of the business process belong to organisational business process level. Conclusively, there is a need for further research to cover a broader usage spectrum of social media in less studied processes in operational level. This paper could be a starting point to guide future research in the field.