Emergence Antecedents of Enterprise Social Media Networks: A Literature Review and Directions for Future Research

What drives the emergence of enterprise social media (ESM) networks? This question cannot be fully answered without studying the scattered body of knowledge. The current research in progress paper addresses this question by means of a preliminary literature review. Precisely, it synthesizes 34 literature findings into a preliminary literature review, which will be further refined and augmented by a research agenda in the future steps. The main theoretical contribution of this paper is to describe 21 antecedents that drive ESM network emergence. In practice, knowledge about these emergence antecedents can be used for various application cases. Examples include developing ESM recommender systems, creating ESM network simulation models, and planning and conducting organizational interventions to optimize ESM networks

Understanding Information-Limiting Environments in Personalized News Platforms—A Systems Perspective

Personalized news platforms (PNPs) have become increasingly popular due to their ability to provide users with tailored, relevant news content. However, their algorithmic selection of news items bears the risk of limiting the diversity of news that users are exposed to, potentially creating information-limiting environments (ILEs). As the emergence of such ILEs involves interdependent sociotechnical interactions, classical positivist approaches have failed to establish an empirically verified theory on this phenomenon. Therefore, we adopt a systems perspective to conceptualize and quantify a model describing the sociotechnical interactions in PNPs that can create ILEs. We then propose an experimental approach to simulate these interactions with real users and validate its viability through an empirical prestudy. In doing so, we contribute to IS research by providing the conceptual and methodological basis for inductive theorizing on the causes of ILEs, which is an essential prerequisite for designing effective interventions to mitigate ILE-induced risks

Unraveling Information-Limiting Environments: An Empirical Review of Individual, Social, and Technological Filters in Social Media

Social media platforms offer a convenient way for people to interact and exchange information. However, there are sustained concerns that filter bubbles and echo chambers create information-limiting environments (ILEs) for their users. Despite a well-developed conceptual understanding, the empirical evidence regarding the causes and supporting conditions of these ILEs remains inconclusive. This paper addresses this gap by applying the triple-filter-bubble model developed by Geschke et al. (2019) to analyze empirical literature on the individual, social, and technological causes of ILEs. While we identify some factors that increase the probability of ILEs under certain conditions, our findings do not suffice to thoroughly validate conceptual models that explain why ILEs emerge. Therefore, we call for future research to investigate the causes of ILEs with higher external validity to develop a more comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon