A systematic mapping study on using social media for business process improvement

Studies involving social media have focused on analyzing how companies can propagate information or how the social media tools can affect user behavior. Few studies have paid attention to User-Generated Content and its application to the improvement of business processes, even though there has been an increase in reported cases in recent years. Through a systematic mapping study of the Ebsco® database, we looked for articles that addressed this issue of user-generated content since its first appearance of up to 2015. In a first view, we confirmed the paucity of research related to this theme, even with the large increase of social media studies. As findings, we identified some important research trends towards public organizations using the content created by citizens to improve public services, as well as companies using social media tools to improve innovation processes. On the other hand, we identified gaps in the research, such as in journalism, engaging readers as information providers, and social media, being used for the improvement of the e-learning process.