Research on social media and journalism (2003-2017): a bibliometric and content review

Abstract

This paper introduces a bibliometric review of the scientific literature on social media and journalism published by journals indexed by Journal Citation Reports until 2017 (n=213). Besides descriptive measurements, it provides a co-citation and co-word analysis. A quantitative content analysis complements the bibliometric approach. Thus, the paper offers a conceptual and structural analysis of the field of study. Results show that the number of articles on the topic is growing steadily since 2014. United States, Australia and England stand as the most productive countries. Studies are based mostly on data from Europe and North America. Three conceptual clusters are identified: audience participation, user generated content and the influence of social media on journalistic professional values and practices. Most of the studies did not consider specific services but focused on the general concept of “social media”. Twitter was the most analyzed platform until recent years, when scholarly attention changed towards Facebook. Research has preferred focusing on political information in detriment of other branches of journalism. The most employed methods are content analysis and in-depth interviews. Further use of surveys and social network analysis, as well as stronger focus on visual studies, is suggested.