Bibliometric Analysis of Press Freedom: Trends, Patterns, and Key Research Areas

Between democratic ideals and platform pressures: Mapping local media research through bibliometric analysis (1977–2024)

Local media research has long been pulled between two demands: the normative expectation that local journalism sustains democratic life, and the structural reality of a digitally reconfigured media environment in which the conditions for that work are eroding. This study examines how that tension has shaped the development of the field through a bibliometric analysis of 1,088 publications indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) core collection between 1977 and 2024. Drawing on temporal trends, citation patterns, co-authorship networks, and keyword co-occurrences, the analysis traces both the quantitative expansion and the thematic reorientation of the literature. Two turning points stand out: a 1990s shift toward political participation and community engagement, and a post-2012 turn toward digital transformation, platform dependency, and the integration of social media into local news ecosystems. Geographic concentration in the USA, Spain, Australia, and England, alongside the marginal but growing visibility of Latin American and Asian scholarship, indicates that the field’s intellectual map is shaped not only by the substance of local media but by uneven structures of academic visibility. These patterns suggest that local media research has functioned less as a geographically defined subfield than as a theoretical space in which communication scholarship negotiates the tension between journalism’s democratic ideals and the structural pressures of an increasingly platformized media environment. The corpus is limited to publications indexed in the WoS core collection, classified under communication, and retrieved through terms appearing in article titles. Just over half of the corpus (552 of 1,088 records) is indexed in the social sciences citation index and almost two-fifths (420) in the emerging sources citation index, which points to a field that is consolidating but still only partially represented in the most established indexes. The article therefore treats the bibliometric record as a visible, indexed part of local media scholarship rather than the whole field and interprets its development through the relationship between democratic expectations, structural media change, and uneven scholarly visibility.

Pressures on Journalists in the Digital Age: A Systematic Review

Journalistic operating conditions have profoundly transformed in the digital era. Beyond established political and institutional pressures, journalists contend with new constraints from digital platforms, online harassment, and media economic restructuring, raising critical concerns for press freedom, autonomy, and sustainable news production. While scholarly focus on these pressures has grown, the literature remains fragmented across disciplines, geographies, and themes. This study synthesizes research on journalistic pressures via a systematic literature review of Scopus-indexed, peer-reviewed publications. Adhering to PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the review analyzes 637 articles (1984-2024), examining temporal trends, research production patterns, disciplinary distributions, and thematic evolution. Findings show rapid scholarship growth in the last decade, mirroring intensified concerns over digital hostility, platform visibility, and economic shifts. Research production is concentrated in Global North institutions, indicating persistent imbalances. Five dominant themes emerge: political/institutional pressures, digital harassment/networked hostility, organizational/economic constraints, journalists' psychological impacts, and digital platforms' influence. By mapping four decades of scholarship, this study offers an integrated perspective on pressures in digitally mediated societies, identifying crucial avenues for future research in journalism and communication studies.

Mapping the Digital Divide: A Bibliometric Analysis of Global Research Trends from 2006 to 2025

Global research on the digital divide from 2006 to 2025 is mapped using bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in Scopus to highlight underexplored issues such as the experiences of marginalized groups, the offline impact of digital exclusion, and new challenges posed by AI, IoT and metaverse.

Bibliometric analysis of civil society: trends and developments from 2019-2024

Scholarship on civil society is dispersed across disciplines, journals, and regional traditions, which makes the field difficult to see as a whole. The objective of this study is to map trends, developments, and structures in civil society research globally during the period 2019–2024. A bibliometric approach was used to analyze 2,528 articles from the Scopus database. A thorough analysis employing Biblioshiny and VOSviewer has been conducted, revealing active research domains with considerable citation impact. Furthermore, the analysis discloses annual output fluctuations that exhibit responsiveness to the global context. The results indicate the preeminence of productivity from the Global North, though there is an increasing trend of participation from the Global South, accompanied by intricate citation impact patterns. Thematically, research focuses on democracy, human rights, and governance, while adapting to challenges such as authoritarianism and the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with a focus on NGOs and collective action. International collaboration (19.42%) and intellectual connectivity are extensive, albeit centered on North-North and North-South networks. This comprehensive mapping underscores the relevance of civil society and highlights the need for efforts to promote more inclusive collaboration and deeper contextual research.

Mapping the intellectual evolution of global soft power research: A longitudinal bibliometric analysis (1991–2025)

Since the end of the Cold War, Joseph S. Nye’s concept of soft power has become a central analytical framework for understanding national attraction and non-coercive influence in international relations. Despite the rapid expansion of both theoretical and empirical research, the field still lacks systematic bibliometric evidence concerning its knowledge structure, thematic evolution, and patterns of scholarly collaboration. To address this gap, this study constructs a comprehensive bibliometric map of global soft power research based on 2,772 English-language social science articles indexed in the Scopus database from 1991 to 2025. Using VOSviewer and RStudio (Biblioshiny), the analysis examines publication trends, citation structures, country collaboration networks, author co-citation relationships, keyword co-occurrence patterns, and thematic evolution pathways. The findings indicate that soft power research experienced steady growth after 2005, followed by a pronounced acceleration after 2015. While the United States, China, and the United Kingdom remain the principal research hubs, Australia emerges as an important cross-regional bridge, suggesting a shift toward a more multi-center structure of knowledge production. Keyword co-occurrence and thematic evolution further reveal a transition from early concept-oriented debates to a more diversified and policy-focused research agenda. In addition, soft power is increasingly conceptualized as an observable and comparable form of international influence, with growing attention to practical domains such as higher education cooperation, sports diplomacy, digital diplomacy, vaccine diplomacy, and the Belt and Road Initiative. Overall, this study systematically maps the intellectual structure and emerging frontiers of global soft power research, highlighting the rise of multipolar soft power and a shift toward policy-oriented and interdisciplinary inquiry, while providing a bibliometric foundation for developing measurable soft power assessment frameworks.

Revealing academic gatekeepers in communication journals: a multilevel network analysis of scholars, institutions, and nation-states on editorial boards