The Use of Crowdsourcing and Social Media in Accounting Research

In this study, we investigate the use of crowdsourcing websites in accounting research. Our analysis shows that the use of crowdsourcing in accounting research is relatively low, and these websites have been mainly used to collect data through surveys and for conducting experiments. Next, we compare and discuss papers related to crowdsourcing in the accounting area with research in computer science (CS) and information systems (IS), which are more advanced in using crowdsourcing websites. We then focus on Amazon Mechanical Turk as one of the most widely used crowdsourcing websites in academic research to investigate what type of tasks can be done through this platform. Based on our task analysis, one of the areas in accounting research that can benefit from crowdsourcing websites is research on social media content. Therefore, we then discuss how research in CS, IS, and crowdsourcing websites can help researchers improve their work on social media.