Invited review paper on social media models, technologies and applications

Alain Chong (Nottingham University Business School China, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, People's Republic of China)
Hing Kai Chan (Nottingham University Business School China, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, People's Republic of China)

Industrial Management & Data Systems

ISSN: 0263-5577

Article publication date: 8 June 2015

737

Citation

Chong, A. and Chan, H.K. (2015), "Invited review paper on social media models, technologies and applications", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2015-0164

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Invited review paper on social media models, technologies and applications

Article Type: Editorial From: Industrial Management & Data Systems, Volume 115, Issue 5

A recent article by Bloomberg stated that Americans now spend more time daily on their Facebook than taking care of their pets. Although this statistics might be surprising to some of us, it is undeniable that social media has today become part of our daily lives. We spend our entertainments, social activities and businesses on social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. With internet usage on mobile devices surpassing PC for the first time in history in 2014, social media applications and technologies will continue to grow and become vital parts of our work and daily lives.

Interest in the study of social media by researches over the last few years has also been growing. A quick search on Emerald and Elsevier using the keyword “Social Media” shows the upward publication trends in social media over the last five years (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Number of articles related to social media

It is not surprising that papers related to social media has increased by almost five times on Emerald and almost nine times on Elsevier given the continuing growing interest in the topic. Within Industrial Management & Data Systems, we have also seen recent many interesting publications related to social media which are published this year such as:

  • Chan, T.K., Cheung, C.M., Shi, N. and Lee, M.K. (2015), “Gender differences in satisfaction with Facebook users”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 No. 1, pp. 182-206.

  • Ainin, S., Parveen, F., Moghavvemi, S., Jaafar, N.I. and Mohd Shuib, N.L. (2015), “Factors influencing the use of social media by SMEs and its performance outcomes”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 No. 3, pp. 570-588.

  • Ch’ng, E. (2015), “The bottom-up formation and maintenance of a Twitter community: analysis of the #FreeJahar Twitter community”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 No. 4, pp. 612-624.

  • Baek, S.I. and Kim, Y.M. (2015), “Longitudinal analysis of online community dynamics”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 No. 4, pp. 661-677.

It is therefore timely that our second invited review paper for 2015 is related to social media, and is titled “Social media models, technologies, and applications: an academic review and case study”. This invited review paper is co-authored by Professor Eric W.T. Ngai, Dr Karen Ka-Leung Moon, Dr S.S. Sam, Dr Eric S.K. Chin and Dr Spencer S.C. Tao. This paper provides a conceptual framework that highlights the tools and technologies as well as theories and models that lays the foundation of social media applications. An interesting and useful case demonstrating how an international non-government organization (NGO) used the proposed framework to facilitate the development of a social media application is also presented in this paper. We hope this paper will serve as a useful platform for future researchers who are interested to develop their research in the area of social media.

Alain Chong and Hing Kai Chan

About the invited paper authors

Professor Eric W.T. Ngai is an Associate Head and Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His current research interests are in the areas of e-commerce, supply chain management, decision support systems, and social media technology and applications. He has over 120 refereed international journal publications, including MIS Quarterly, Journal of Operations Management, Decision Support Systems, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management and Production & Operations Management. He is an Associate Editor of Information & Management and serves on the Editorial Board of three other international journals.

Dr Karen Ka-Leung Moon is an Associate Professor at Seoul National University, Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design, Republic of Korea. Dr Moon has worked in the fashion industry as a Designer, R&D Researcher, Merchandiser and Retail Entrepreneur. She has also worked as a Faculty Member at various tertiary education institutions, including Hong Kong Vocational Training Council, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Hanyang University. Her professional expertise and research interests embrace fashion business, supply chain management, implementation of innovative technologies and consumer behaviour. She has over 50 publications in peer-reviewed international journals, including IJPE, IJOPM, EJOR, IMDS, JOTI, IJPR, JBIM, ESWA, JECR and EAAI.

Dr S.S. Lam is an Associate Professor in the Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, The Open University of Hong Kong. Dr Lam has worked for research in management science modelling and simulation for optimization and decision support more than 15 years. He has published in refereed international journals such as Journal of Operational Research Society, International Journal of Production Economics, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Global Optimization, Computers & Operations Research and European Journal of Operational Research. His current research focus is on intelligent systems and social media technology and analytics.

Dr Eric S.K. Chin is a Visiting Lecturer and Consultant-in-Residence of Business Consulting Praticum, in the Faculty of Business and Economics, and at The University of Hong Kong, a Researcher in the Department of Management and Marketing. Dr Chin is an Advisor on Advisory Board for MSc in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour programme in the Lingnan University. Dr Chin is the District Governor (2015-2016) in the Rotary International District 3450 (Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia and People’s Republic of China-Guangdong Province). His Research interests include social media marketing, internet security assimilation.

Dr Spencer S.C. Tao is the Chief Executive Officer at the Hong Kong Federation of Innovative Technologies and Manufacturing Industries (FITMI). He has held various executive management positions at different academic and commercial organizations. His research interests include social media technology and strategic management.

Related articles