Social media for knowledge-sharing: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Context: Advanced social media tools have changed the way people communicate, share content, interact, and collaborate. Nowadays, social media (SM) is becoming a valuable platform for facilitating knowledge sharing (KS) and communication, not only on a personal or individual level, but also for organizations. This trend has attracted significant attention from the professional and academic fields. However, despite the important and rapid growth of research in this area, few attempts have been made to systematically review and incorporate findings from previous surveys, and to assess the current state of research regarding social media's use in knowledge sharing. Objective: The main objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding, and a detailed review, of the current state of research regarding social media use for knowledge sharing. In this research, we conducted a systematic review approach to collect, analyze and synthesize data regarding the accuracy and value of previous articles focused on this research field, addressing a variety of topics, and published in digital databases between 2010 and 2016. Method: We used a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method to collect and review studies by following a predefined review procedure, integrating both the automatic and manual search strategies, in order to cover all relevant research papers published in this period. Results: From the review study, we identified 103 selected primary studies presenting research about SM use for KS, reviewed through a systematic mapping approach that extracted relevant information to answer a defined set of research questions. We analyzed and categorized the published papers, covering numerous research topics including SM for KS user behavior, utility and benefits, social media platform and tools, and other topics that otherwise attract little attention. For this research, the majority of the studies reviewed focused on SM for KS user behaviors. This in turn highlighted a direction for further research. Conclusions: The systematic review indicated that, although SM is increasingly used for KS and giving a promising new area of research, a better understanding of the landscape and direction is not well reported. This study offers a related discussion and conclusions.