Social Media Research: An Assessment of the Domain's Productivity and Intellectual Evolution

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to conduct a bibliographic investigation and meta-analysis of the full body of social media scholarship produced over eight years, since the domain's emergence in 2004. A total of 610 journal and conference papers were carefully reviewed and subjected to bibliometric and meta-analysis techniques. A number of research questions pertaining to country, institutional, and individual productivity, as well as research design and data practices in the social media field, were proposed and answered. Our results reveal two main challenges faced by the field. First, the social media domain displays limited intellectual diversity in terms of productive and impactful actors—individual, institutions, and countries—as well as publications that have hitherto skewed the domain's focus in a limited direction. Second, the research design approaches and data practices characterizing the domain seem to reflect methodological singularity characterized by a strong tendency for cross-sectional, individual-level, survey or case-based studies. Furthermore, speculative and anecdotal evidence, based on personal opinions and armchair hypotheses, is extremely widespread and stand in the way of the domain's methodological and theoretical advancement. These challenges not only help to improve one's understanding of the identity and intellectual core of social media as a distinct scientific field but can also further prompt academic debate and careful (re)examination of the domain's scholarly practices and assumptions to ensure its future advancement in the most productive manner.