Big Data Exploration in New Media: Trends and Methodological Approaches

This paper focuses on drawing trends and methodological evidences from previous studies in big data field considering the fact that big data helps individuals, governments and businesses understand the essence of collecting large data and processed it towards effective decisions making having identified many patterns within it.
The review of 32 journal articles shows that most of the scholars developed own and used Internet-enabled software for exploration of big data in the new media. This indicates an existing problem in terms of availability of the right data collection and analysis tools. The review also reveals that majority of the scholars found it difficult to select appropriate samples using probability procedure. The attention was largely shifted to non-probability procedure. On the research trends, the scholars exclusively focused on relationship and politics, revealing behavioural patterns in the network, discourse focus and network connectivity, demographics as determinant of interactions and connections, patterns and messages speed at the expense of news and business areas. These issues and trends have created gaps for potential scholars in the field to conduct studies that would contribute to the knowledge base in the big data field.