Global trends in research related to social media in psychology: mapping and bibliometric analysis

Social media, defined as interactive Web applications [1], have been on the rise globally, particularly among adults [2, 3]. Overall, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Instagram were the most used social network worldwide [4, 5]. Hundreds of publications have discussed the benefits and harm stemming from social media in different age groups of both genders [6]. Of particular interest is the impact of social media on the psychology and self-image of users. A recently published report indicated that social media can be used to forecast and prevent suicide attempts at the national level [7]. Another recent report indicated that social media, particularly Facebook, are positively correlated with divorce [8]. Survey studies, such as that conducted by Clayton et al. [9], had shown that high levels of Facebook use, when mediated by Facebook-related conflict with romantic partners, significantly predict negative relationship outcomes [9‐11]. Previous studies clearly indicated that social media makes it easy for users to reconnect with any past lover, which could lead to emotional cheating and this could then lead to a breakup or divorce [9‐11]. The diverse psychological and behavioral effects of social media on users necessitate further and deeper analysis. Such an analysis will be of value not only to academic researchers, but also to sociology experts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and even to those in the field of telecommunications to adapt and tailor these social media to the psychological health and needs of the users. Bibliometric and scientometric studies on Facebook and other social media have been carried out to assess the research trends in these social media in general [12‐15]. Similarly, several bibliometric and scientometric studies have been accomplished to assess the research trends in psychology and behavior [16‐18]. However, no search of the literature for bibliometric or scientometric analyses of psychology publications pertaining to social media was found. In response, this study was designed to address this gap by mapping the literature regarding the largest and most popular social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Instagram) [4, 5] in the field of psychology. Specifically, this study will assess the growth in publications, citation analysis, international collaboration, author productivity, emerging topics and the mapping of frequent terms in publications pertaining to social media in the field of psychology.

The database used in this bibliometric study, the Web of Science (WoS) database: Core Collection [20], is one of the largest and comprehensive bibliographic databases covering multidisciplinary areas. It encompasses over 12,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide (i.e. those considered to be highly influential in their fields) that contain somewhat higher data quality in the scientific, technical, medical, and social sciences [19‐23].

To retrieve the research related to social media in the field of psychology, we applied the following steps to conduct this bibliometric study:

The present study outlines the bibliometric indicators of the scientific research related to social media in psychology during the research timeframe from 2004 to 2015. We found a total of 10,843 publications related to social media published between 2004 and 2015. There were 959 scientific publications related to social media in psychology. Nine types of documents were found, and the most common was research articles (873 documents), which accounted for 91.03% of the total publications. The second most common document type was meeting abstracts (41 documents, 4.28% of the total). As expected, the majority of the publications were written in English (99.06%). Figure 1 shows the publication productivity related to social media and the publication productivity related to social media in psychology over time. The correlation analysis clearly shows a high correlation between the number of publication in the field of social media and the publication productivity related to social media in psychology (r = 0.995; p value < 0.001).

This increase in publications related to social media in psychology seems to be related to (1) social networking sites, which became very popular in previous decade [25, 26]; (2) increasing interest in this field in multiple health disciplines [27‐31]; (3) or general cause such as the increasingly prevalent use of the internet, which has allowed more rapid distribution of medical knowledge through scientific research [32].

Table 1 shows information about the 10 countries with the most published papers. The USA is responsible for the most papers (548 documents, 57.14% of the total), with the highest h-index values (h-index value = 48). The USA is followed by the UK (69, 6.69%), Canada (46, 4.80%), Germany (46, 4.80%), and Australia (44, 4.59%). The h-index for all retrieved publications was 59. The publications with the most international collaboration were those from the USA (n = 100). The UK and China ranked second and third, with 35 and 17 documents for each, respectively. The collaboration between countries based on co-authorship is shown in Fig. 2. The USA is the most networked country, collaborating with 26 countries, followed by the UK (n = 22) and Germany (n = 15). The USA was the most prolific country in producing publications related to psychology in social media, contributing to more than of half of the publications related to this topic. This research output from the USA is possibly due to the large size of the population or economic forces [33, 34]. Furthermore, most of the social networking sites were established and founded in the USA. These findings are similar to those found in previous bibliometric studies in different fields, principally that the USA had the highest activity in scientific research output worldwide and in international collaboration networks, as well as the highest h-index [32, 35‐37]. Regarding the international collaboration, this emphasizes the significance of global networking and its impact on research output [38‐41].

Table 2 lists the top 10 most productive journals with their IF. The major publication outlets for research related to social media in psychology include Computers in Human Behavior (n = 375), Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking (n = 134), the Journal of Adolescent Health (n = 30), Personality and Individual Differences (n = 25), and American Behavioral Scientist (n = 23).

The scientific landscape of main research areas related to social media in psychology is presented in Fig. 3, based on the retrieved publications terms co-occurrence network from the retrieved publications. The most important research areas related to social media in psychology were personality psychology, experimental psychology, psychological risk factors, and developmental psychology. Based on the map, the four main clusters (denoted by the green, blue, red, and yellow colours) were characterised by the most commonly used terms in the research related to social media in the psychology field. Green coloured cluster represented terms related to the developmental psychology topic, such as “child”, “adolescent”, or “adult”; blue coloured cluster represented terms related to personality psychology, such as “extraversion”, “openness”, or “romantic”; red coloured cluster represented terms related to experimental psychology, such as “empirical”, “experiment”, or “mechanism”; and yellow coloured cluster represented terms related to psychological risk factors, such as “risk” or “alcohol”.

Table 3 lists the 10 most cited among these papers. The 10 most cited articles were published in 4 journals [42‐51]. The most-cited article, by Pempek et al., which investigated how much, why, and how college students use social networking sites, was published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology in 2009 and has been cited 426 times [46]. The most recent manuscript in the top 10, by Lin and Lu, which investigated the factors affecting user’s joining social networking sites, was published in 2011 and has been cited 241 times [44].

Table 4 shows the top 10 institutions based on the number of publications related to social media in the psychology field. It is worth noting that the University of Wisconsin–Madison ranked first in terms of the total publications (n = 39). Ohio State University (n = 25) was second to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the total number of publications, followed by Michigan State University (n = 23) and the University of Texas at Austin (n = 23). Figure 4 shows the collaboration between the most prolific institutions.

This bibliometric study represents the first concise analysis of the global publications related to social media in psychology and shows the benefits of bibliometric analysis for evaluating research productivity in a standardised way. There are some limitations, most of which have already been mentioned in previous bibliometric studies [52‐56]. The first is that the study was centred only on the most used social network worldwide. The value of other social networking sites might also be evaluated in order to provide a more faithful representation of all the research activities in this field. In our study, we decided to include only commonly-known networking sites related to the field of social media; however, social media is a rapidly changing and growing field [57]. A second limitation is that our study was based on the WoS Core Collection database; thus, it is expected that publications published in non-WoS-cited journals may not have been included in the analysis. Thirdly, some publications regarding social media might have been published in non-psychology journals.

Up to the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first ever bibliometric study to report worldwide activity in social media—related research in psychology field. Our study provides some novel insights useful for policy makers, researchers, and funders interested in advancing an evidence-based social media and psychology research agenda. International research collaborations and research networks should be encouraged to help prioritize social media—related psychology research particularly in countries with research capacities. Our findings provide baseline data for scholars and policy makers to recognize the bibliometric indicators in the current study as measures of research performance in social media for future policies and funding decisions. Finally, our study showed that bibliometric analysis is a good methodological tool to map published literature in a particular subject and to pin point research gaps in that subject.