Bibliometric analysis of social media studies within educational research

Abstract

The digital transformation in higher education can be observed in numerous ways and practices. Recently, post-pandemic digitalization played a significant role in the increase of the educational use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, and social media. Among these, social media has dominated daily life long before the rest of the technologies. Hence, examining the current situation of social media studies within educational research aids in envisioning the future vision. This study aims to outline the trends in the use of social media platforms by analyzing them within educational research published between 2017-2023. For this purpose, 473 articles in the Web of Science database were examined regarding the dimensions of publication year, country of publication, author, keyword, article type, the method used, sampling, data collection tools and analysis methods, and social media use. The findings of this study are believed to guide practitioners and researchers in their practice and consideration of social media within educational environments.