Abstract

Digital trace data offer promising opportunities to study temporal dynamics and change in various socio-technical phenomena. While we see a surging interest around what is commonly referred to as ‘process research’, we lack a systematic understanding of why, how, and when digital trace data are or can be used to study dynamics and change. In this article, we conduct a systematic literature review to uncover common approaches, motivations, findings, and general themes of research that relies on digital traces to study the development of socio-technical phenomena over time. To this end, we systematically reviewed 40 studies that were published in the AIS Basket of Eight and other outlets. Our review provides insights into the (1) underlying purpose of such studies, (2) utilized data sources, (3) research contexts, (4) phenomena of interest, (5) applied analytical methods, and (6) measures that are being used. Building on our findings, we point to several implications for research and shed light on avenues to advance this field in the future.

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