Social Media Research, Human Behavior, and Sustainable Society

Quan Li,Yongsheng Jiang,Xinyue Ye,Nian Xiong,Wenbo Wei,Daici Feng

doi:10.3390/su9030384

Abstract

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to review social media research from different perspectives during the period of 2008–2014 based on the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index database. Using a collection of 10,042 articles related to social media, the bibliometric analysis revealed some interesting patterns and trend of the scientific outputs, major journals, subject categories, spatial distribution, international collaboration, and temporal evolution in keywords usage in social media studies. The research on social media has been characterized by rapid growth and dynamic collaboration, with a rising number of publications and citation. Communication, Sociology, Public, Environment & Occupational Health, Business, and Multidisciplinary Psychology were the five most common categories. Computers in Human Behavior was the journal with the most social media publications, and Computers & Education ranked first according to the average citations. The two most productive countries were the U.S. and UK, delivering about half of the publications. The proportion of China’s internationally collaborative publications was the highest. The University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University were three most productive institutions. Several keywords, such as “Facebook”, “Twitter”, “communication”, “Social Networking Sites”, “China”, “climate change”, “big data” and “social support” increasingly gained the popularity during the study period, indicating the research trends on human behavior and sustainability.

Highlights

Social media platforms are computer-mediated tools that allow people to create, share, or exchange information, career interests, ideas, pictures, and videos in virtual communities and networks
The emphasis of the discussion below was to describe global scientific production on social media research from following aspects: (1) Growth of output during 2008–2014; (2) Distribution of output in subject categories and journals identified by ISI; (3) Geographic and institutional distribution of publications; (4) Distribution of author keywords analysis; (5) Institution collaboration network analysis
Ten thousand and forty-two publications were identified as being social media-related during 2008–2014

Summary

Introduction

Social media platforms are computer-mediated tools that allow people to create, share, or exchange information, career interests, ideas, pictures, and videos in virtual communities and networks. Lots of review has been done in the field of social media from the perspective of tourism and hospitality [20], sales process [21], communication [22,23], emergency management [24], higher education [25], and E-government [26], there is still a lack of general overview that can reveal the holistic trend of social media research. Bibliometric studies have not been performed on the comprehensive social media research literature The purpose of this bibliometric study is to analyze the SCI/SSCI scientific literatures on Social Media from 2008 to 2014 by examining the scientific outputs, source titles, science categories, geographical distribution of the authors, international collaborations, and temporal development of keyword frequencies. This study can promote social media research and help researchers in this rapidly growing field

Data and Methods

Characteristics of Article Outputs

Geographic and Institutional Distribution of Publications

Temporal Evolution of Author Keywoorrddss

Conclusions