Artificial Intelligence in Communication Studies: An Investigation on Studies Between 1982-2021

Abstract

This study explores the profile of media and communication studies on artificial intelligence and presents a perspective on the general structure of the literature. In this study, 459 scientific studies published between 1982 and 2021, which have been increasing even further since 2016, were examined via bibliometric data. The country that published the most was the USA with 25.1%. Turkey ranked 28th among 54 countries with four publications. Two hundred sixty-seven article publications were distributed in 96 different journals. By testing the compatibility of this distribution with Bradford’s Law, eight core journals meeting the needs of communication literature on artificial intelligence, were identified. New Media & Society ranked first on this list. Topics covered in the studies focused on journalism, natural language processing, human-robot interaction, social media bots, public relations and advertising. The most frequently used concepts in abstracts and keywords were “automated journalism,” “computational journalism,” “robot journalism,” “ethics,” “fake news.” The most frequently cited journal was Digital Journalism. The half-life value of cited publications was seven years. The results revealed the artificial intelligence trends in communication studies and the general structure of the communication literature. In addition, it is suggested that the results regarding literature obsolescence and core journals would contribute to the creation of subscriptions and journal collections in libraries.