information Article Adoption of Social Media in Socio-Technical Systems: A Survey Gianfranco Lombardo † , Monica Mordonini † and Michele Tomaiuolo * ,†   Citation: Lombardo, G.; Mordonini, M.; Tomaiuolo, M. Adoption of Social Media in Socio-Technical Systems: A Survey. Information 2021, 12, 132. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ info12030132 Academic Editor: Pedro C. Marijuán Received: 7 February 2021 Accepted: 15 March 2021 Published: 18 March 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Department of Computer Engineering, University of Parma, 43121 Parma, Italy; gianfranco.lombardo@unipr.it (G.L.); monica.mordonini@unipr.it (M.M.) * Correspondence: michele.tomaiuolo@unipr.it † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: This article describes the current landscape in the fields of social media and socio-technical systems. In particular, it analyzes the different ways in which social media are adopted in organiza- tions, workplaces, educational and smart environments. One interesting aspect of this integration, is the use of social media for members’ participation and access to the processes and services of their organization. Those services cover many different types of daily routines and life activities, such as health, education, transports. In this survey, we compare and classify current research works accord- ing to multiple features, including: the use of Social Network Analysis and Social Capital models, users’ motivations for participation and organizational costs, adoption of the social media platform from below. Our results show that many of these current systems are developed without taking into proper consideration the social structures and processes, with some notable and positive exceptions. Keywords: social media; socio-technical systems; feral systems; firms; nonprofit; smart cities 1. Introduction Information technologies are increasingly intertwined with human organizations and processes in most areas, including businesses, firms, education, assistance, administrations, etc. This kind of integration is giving rise to so-called Socio-Technical Systems, which show tighter integration and more blurred borders between the technical and social spheres, by the day. Correspondingly, especially for large systems, their development is becoming chal- lenging, since it requires attention to multiple aspects, including social and technological requirements and issues. The pervasive diffusion of capable devices, both at home and in mobility scenarios, with powerful processing and communication capabilities, further fuels the emergence and development of such systems, giving rise to Internet of Things (IoT) [1] and Pervasive Intelligence [2] scenarios. In fact, in these computational environments, new applications are being developed, integrating wearable devices with home computing, mobile phones with smart infrastructures, social media with mapping and geolocation, etc. In many cases, Socio-Technical Systems act as “systems of systems”, since they support the interconnection of multiple social systems [3], generating and processing information in many repetitive, tedious or hazardous tasks [4], also for disaster recovery. In these cases, diverse conflicting requirements, expressed in different notations and according to different models, may make the development particularly difficult. As a typical real case, social media are being often integrated with other technical systems and social structures and processes. This kind of development requires to have a clear vision of the possible advantages, costs and risks of the integration [5]. Considering urbanization phenomena, they offer opportunities in terms of economic and social life, but also several technological challenges when designing novel tools to improve the citizens’ quality of life. Indeed, as the population increases, urban issues like traffic jams, pollution, overcrowding, disaster recovery, management of resources like water and energy become crucial to monitor and govern. Moreover, municipalities and local governments are going to increasingly offer their services using ICT technologies to reduce Information 2021, 12, 132. https://doi.org/10.3390/info12030132 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/information