A Bibliometric Analysis of Text Mining: Exploring the Use of Natural Language Processing in Social Media Research

Abstract

Natural language processing (NLP) plays a pivotal role in modern life by enabling computers to comprehend, analyze, and respond to human language meaningfully, thereby offering exciting new opportunities. As social media platforms experience a surge in global usage, the imperative to capture and better understand the messages disseminated within these networks becomes increasingly crucial. Moreover, the occurrence of adverse events, such as the emergence of a pandemic or conflicts in various parts of the world, heightens social media users’ inclinations towards these platforms. In this context, this paper aims to explore the scientific literature dedicated to the utilization of NLP in social media research, with the goal of highlighting trends, keywords, and collaborative networks within the authorship that contribute to the proliferation of papers in this field. To achieve this objective, we extracted and analyzed 1852 papers from the ISI Web of Science database. An initial observation reveals a remarkable annual growth rate of 62.18%, underscoring the heightened interest of the academic community in this domain. This paper includes an n-gram analysis and a review of the most cited papers in the extracted database, offering a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. The insights gained from these efforts provide essential perspectives and contribute to identifying pertinent issues in social media analysis addressed through the application of NLP.