A Unified Framework for Decision-Making Process on Social Media Analytics

Data analysis originated from social media presents huge interest among researchers and practitioners. In order to understand better and clarify notions and methodologies used regarding social media analytics, a framework is needed with clear classification schemes and procedures. The objective of this paper is to develop a unified framework that clusters the possible categories of data and their interactions. Furthermore, the proposed framework indicates the procedures that have to be followed in order to achieve the most optimized choice of social media analytics (SMA) methodology, initiating the 4P's procedure (People, Purpose, Platform, and Process). Next, the methodologies used on SMA, in specific the structural and content-based analysis, as well as their sub-methodologies (community and influencers' detection, NLP, text, sentiment, and geospatial analysis) are indicated. The proposed framework will facilitate researchers and marketers on the decision-making process by clarifying each step, regarding the objectives, the involved parties, the social media platform, and the analysis process that can be chosen.