Decoding Social Media Research in Education through Bibliometric Mapping

The advancement of social media as a means of communication, collaboration, and sharing of information within educational contexts has resulted in a shift in the way we teach and learn. The increase in the use of online networks and other technologies worldwide has created significant changes to how we educate, engage in, and communicate with students in various parts of the world. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of research articles related to the intersection of social media with education from the Scopus database between 2011 and 2025. A total of 1,604 research documents were retrieved through a previously defined search term. The data collected for this study was analyzed through Microsoft Excel, Biblioshiny, and VOSviewer. The analysis evaluated the trends of publication, types of documents published, researchers, the journals that published the documents, the organizations that funded the research, the countries where the research was conducted, the most frequently cited research, and the co-occurrence of keywords. The results of this study show that there has been a steady and continual increase in the number of research outputs within the field of social media and education, suggesting an increasing level of academic interest in research in this area. Journal articles made up the majority of the publication output in the area of social media and education. Researchers in the U.S.A contributed to the largest number of publications and citations in the area of social media and education. Only a few researchers made contributions to the body of literature but had a huge impact on the field al-Rahmi and Waleed Mugahed. Among the journals, Sustainability (Switzerland) had the most significant impact on the field of social media and education, according to the number of publications and the number of citations of those publications. The keywords that occurred the most in the research literature included social media, education, higher education, students, and medical education. The analysis of the co-occurrence of keywords produced five clusters in the VOSviewer network visualization: higher education; digital learning; healthcare communication; public health studies; nursing education; and vocational education. In summary, the field of social media and education is growing as an interdisciplinary field and will continue to have an increasing impact on digital learning, communication, and educational advancement worldwide.