A Lexical Analysis of Social Software Literature

Abstract

Social software are today more prevalent in organizational context, providing new ways for work and giving web users new opportunities for interaction and collaboration. This review aims to gain insight into the extent of available scholarly and professional literature on these new tools and into interests in this field. The analysis of the 5356 collected articles includes type of publication, year of publication, source, keywords in articles' titles and abstracts. The study here adopted a systematic approach for the literature review, that is, the principle of Lexical Analysis.

Enterprise Social Networks: Status Quo of Current Research and Future Research Directions

“…In doing so, the question focussed on is which core questions for future research are identified in each paper. For this reason, the research work by Altamimi [3], Williams et al [16], and Berger et al [11] is outlined in the following.…”

“…Altamimi [3] analysed the scientific literature on Social Software in a lexical study published in 2013. His objective was to systematically present the evolution of the literature since the development of social software and Web 2.0 technologies.…”

“…As for identifying directions for future research, his claims are threefold: to have considered the advantages and disadvantages of Social Software usage in organisational scenarios; to have determined the effects and successes of Enterprise Social Software; and to have analysed the problems arising along the way. Altamimi further states that continuative literature reviews with innovative approaches, such as content analysis, are required [3].…”

“…Organisations introduce Web 2.0 tools for internal applications too, e.g. to enable employees to share information and to support cooperation with customers and partners [3]. A group of these tools that has gained particular attention in an organisational context is called Enterprise Social Networks (ESN).…”

“…ESN support users in communicating with each other beyond spatial and temporal distances and in having conversations via the company network [3,9]. Hence, ESN facilitate communication on an individual level, in private or public groups, and finally across an entire enterprise [4,10].…”