Abstract
New ideas are often born from connecting the dots. What new ideas have emerged among the two highly trending research topics of sustainability and social media? In this study, we present an empirical analysis of 762 published works that included the terms “sustainability” and “social media” in their abstracts. The bibliographic data, including abstracts, were collected from the Scopus database. In order to conduct the analysis, we used the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to extract the latent topics from the large quantity of research abstracts without any manual adjustment. The 10 main topics identified from our analysis revealed topographical maps of research in the field. By measuring the variation of topic distributions over time, we identified hot topics (research trends that are becoming increasingly popular over time) and cold topics. Sustainable consumer behavior, Sustainable community and Sustainable tourism were identified as being hot topics, while Education for sustainability was identified as the only cold topic. By identifying current trends in social media and sustainability research, our findings lay a platform from which further studies may abound.
Highlights
The research’s center of gravity has shifted from general discussion to specific applications. This was well represented by the statistically insignificant change in the proportion of (T6) Sustainable development, which corresponds to the general discussion of sustainability research that deals with global, national, macro, and policy issues, while (T7) Sustainable community and (T9) Sustainable tourism, which correspond to specific applications of sustainability in smaller areas, have emerged as hot topics
The reason why (T9) Sustainable tourism has become a hot topic is that sustainable tourism itself has gained significant popularity, and social media is playing a vital role in its success, through sharing experiences and reaching a new customer base, as mentioned earlier
This study developed a topographic map of sustainability research and its interface with social media
Summary
Sustainability and social media are two megatrends that have formed a new management paradigm in the 21st century. What new ideas have emerged from the two highly trending research topics of sustainability and social media? With the advancement of the concept of sustainability, emphasis has turned to the more specific goals of sustainability: economic progress, social development, and the conservation of the environment for future generations. They are called the three pillars of sustainability, and, based on this conceptual foundation, sustainability research has begun to bloom in earnest in each related academic field. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model, Sustainability 2021, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW landscape of sustainability and social media study.
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