Social Media Analytics: Opportunities and Challenges for Cultural Tourism Destinations

Social Media

Although there is no single definition of social media, various terms are used to closer define social media, depending on research purpose and perspective. Among them are web 2.0 (Constantinides, Fountain, 2008; Constantinides, 2008), social websites (Akehurst, 2009; Kim et al., 2010), platforms for social communication (Jansen et al., 2009), etc. The additional term that helps define social media is user-generated content (Dhar and Chang, 2009; Dotan and Zaphiris, 2010; O’Connor, 2010). However, most of the authors use the term social media (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Thevenot, 2007; Smith, 2009; Xiang and Gretzel, 2010; Para-Lopez et al., 2011; Mangold and Faulds, 2009; Leung et al., 2013; Jin et al., 2010; Hanna et al., 2011; Cha et al., 2010). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, 61) are focusing on platform and content and consider social media ‘’a group of online applications that are based on ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0, and which facilitate creation and exchange of user-generated content’’. However, it is a broad term that includes platforms such as social networks, blogs, microblogs, social news, platforms for multimedia sharing, review websites, and others (Gundecha and Liu, 2012; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Social networks are the most widespread subgroup of social media, with Facebook as a typical representative. Boyd and Ellison (2007, p.211) define social network sites as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system”. With the emergence of social media and web 2.0 technologies, communication is not one-way anymore, meaning that users are active participants, generating large amounts of data every day.