Table 1 Summary of BSD-related concepts, types of data they cover as well as challenges and research goals related to the area

Big Social Data as science

 Ishikawa [22]

SBD—science about relationships between physical world data and social media data

Social media data (explicit semantics); physical real world data (implicit semantics)

Volume; variety; velocity; vague

To clarify fundamental conceptualization of SBD and its applications

 Pentland [30]

Social physics—quantitative social science about connections between idea/information flow and human behavior

Physical world and social media data that reveal human behavior

Large size; data is ubiquitous and real-time

To conceptualize social physics; To reveal applications of social physics in real-world settings

Data-driven approaches to Big Social Data

 Guelil and Boukhalfa [31]

Concepts from Barbier [33], Mukkamala [34] and Nguyen [35]. SBD is a part of social computing

Social media data

Lack of completeness; large size; dynamic and unstructured

To review research on SBD and classify related literature; to study analytical approaches to SBD

 Coté [36]

Concept of data motility under the age of BSD

Data from mediated humans’ practices

Volume; symbolic nature of data; distributed infrastructure; lack of regulations

To conceptualize the data motility; to bring conceptual boundaries of BSD

Big Social Data for society

 Burges and Bruns [37]

BSD is social media data

Social media data

Data authenticity, reliability and accessibility issues

To assess feasibility of research in BSD; to reveal potential issues while working with BSD in academia context

 Housley et al. [42]

“Big and broad” social data

Social media data

Volume; variety; velocity; real-time; dynamic

To conduct observatory research of “big and broad” social data opportunities and challenges

Big Social Data as method

 Bello-Orgaz et al. [46]

BSD —processes and methods to extract knowledge from social media to users or companies

Social media data

Volume; velocity; variety; value; veracity

To review technologies and applications for processing Big Data from social media