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

Zyoud, Sa’ed H.; Sweileh, Waleed M.; Awang, Rahmat; Al-Jabi, Samah W.

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.