Digital Trace Data for Research on Organizational Communication Processes

Communication in contemporary organizations increasingly unfolds through digital platforms that generate detailed traces of everyday interaction. For organizational researchers, these digital trace data offer new opportunities to study communication, coordination, and relational dynamics as they unfold in situ. Realizing this potential, however, requires both a clearer understanding of how these methods have been used so far and more concrete guidance for future research. We therefore pursue two goals: to synthesize how digital trace data have been used in organizational research on communication processes, and to clarify how future research can use them more effectively. We conducted a machine-learning-assisted scoping review of 132 studies investigating computer-mediated communication in work settings. Most studies relied on organizationally provided archival data, while fewer used participant-centered tools. Reporting was often incomplete, with limited detail on access, preprocessing, or analytic procedures, and explicit discussion of ethical and practical constraints was uncommon. Building on these findings, we identify broader organizational communication domains for which digital trace data are especially useful and develop the DATA-TRACE roadmap for designing and reporting digital trace data studies in organizational research.