Social Media and the Smart City: A Systematic Review of City- and Citizen-Led Digital Spaces

This systematic review examines how social media is conceptualized and studied within the context of smart cities, with a particular focus on the distinction between city-led and citizen-led digital spaces. Analyzing a sample of 50 peer-reviewed articles, the review identifies dominant techno-functionalist approaches that frame social media primarily as a data source for urban optimization, event detection, and service delivery. While some studies gesture toward participatory or socially embedded uses of social media, the majority lack engagement with specific urban contexts or active representations of cities and their citizens. The review highlights a significant gap in research on the actually existing smart city and the sociocultural dimensions of urban digital life. The findings underscore the need for future research to move beyond top-down, efficiency-driven narratives and to critically engage with emerging technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence, in both institutional and grassroots urban media practices. The article calls for a reimagining of smart cities and smart citizenship that centers participatory and socially grounded perspectives.