Social media influence: a comprehensive review in general and in tourism domain

Abstract

The social media influence (SMI) has become one of the most important issues in politics, protests, diplomacy, tourism and so on. Lately, researchers have done their work, using Social Influence Analysis (SIA); which allows to analyze and measure the influence that social media has on each of these domains. The main aim of this work is show and analyze the approaches, models, methods and techniques that are used in SMI; with emphasis in tourism domain. The comprehensive review is based on 35 papers selected out 195 search results. Out of the studies that use data from social media, the most used platform is Twitter. In general domains, out of the analyzed studies, the qualitative analysis is the most used approach. There are several works that use SIA methods: (i) Maximization 4, (ii) flow of influence 4, (iii) individual influence 3. Out of the works analyzed, 10 use microscopic model. In tourism domain the most used approach is the exploratory research and there isn’t works that use quantitative research. The conclusion of this work is that SIA is a subject of great interest with qualitative and quantitative research. In tourism, it is in its infancy; challenges, opportunities and emerging approaches are also presented.