Mapping the Landscape of Sustainability in Social Media: A Bibliometric Analysis and Research Trends

Social media adoption has accelerated the generation and dissemination of content, allowing for the communication of important issues like sustainability and climate change. The current study seeks to explore the evolution of sustainability in social media research through network and bibliometric analysis. The bibliographic themes in the field have been studied using citation analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, keyword co-occurrence and content analysis using the VOSviewer software. The Scopus database has been used to survey the literature from 2001 to 2023. To ensure accuracy in the data obtained, 757 documents were finalized through numerous inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results suggest that sustainable development, marketing, perception, decision making and innovation were some of the most frequently studied topics in the area. The United States, China and the United Kingdom were the top contributing countries and Sustainability Switzerland, Journal Of Cleaner Production and Environmental Science and Pollution Research were some of the highly productive journals. Keywords such as big data, business development, economic and social effects, economic development and public attitude were less frequently studied, providing scope for future exploration. The study is one of the early attempts to research the development and evolution of sustainability in social media. It was found that the area is in its growth phase. As a result, it adds to the body of knowledge on social media and sustainability and opens new arenas for investigation.