What\u27s Trending in Social Media Analytics Area? A Retrospective

A sub-area of business analytics increasingly growing in prominence is social media analytics (SMA) which is not surprising given the large volume of data and content generated daily in social media. Despite the growing interest, given the vastness of the area, there is little understanding of the topics and issues with respect to SMA that should be investigated by IS researchers. In an effort to contribute to this understanding, this paper in progress analyses SMA trends in research and practice. After searching within nineteen leading academic, practitioner and crossover outlets, we used an inductive approach to categorize the resulting articles. Preliminary results indicate that future IS studies should approach SMA as systems, and adopt a critical stance towards the existing claims that SMA only positively impacts organizations. Results also indicate that ethical-legal implications of SMA should receive more attention. Limitations of the study and plans for the future are highlighted