Development of Digital Culture Research — Bibliometric Analysis Using CiteSpace

Abstract

The article contains a bibliometric analysis conducted on the basis of bibliographic data from the years 1996–2022, extracted from the Scopus database (May 2022). The method used involved steps beyond the traditional counting of publications and citations as well as drawing conclusions based on reading the content of academic papers. Complete biographic datasets were used for advanced analyses performed in the program CiteSpace. The state of research into digital culture may be described as follows: (1) it constitutes a new area of research that has seen particularly intensive development for the last 15 years or so; (2) systematic research is conducted by a small set of researchers; (3) they publish the findings of their research in a small selection of journals (around a dozen) and in books; (4) books contribute most to the development of such research (mainly around a dozen of the most popular ones); (5) the subject-matter of this research embraces mainly such issues as: copyright law, critical digital studies, digital art, network society, digital media, digital modernity, information technology, digitalisation, influencers, the internet era, memes, new media, social media, social networks, video games, and visual culture.