A Visualized and Bibliometric Analysis of Information-related Research on COVID-19

Abstract

When a public health crisis occurs, people’s needs for information increase sharply and information access can be a matter of life and death. To understand citizens’ information-related behavior under COVID-19, information researchers published prolifically. The present study aims to map the contour of COVID-19 researches relating to information. Publications relating to information issues during COVID-19 pandemic were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. Using the Citespace bibliometric tool, most productive authors, journals, institutions, countries and most cited articles were identified. Keyword co-occurrence and cluster analysis were conducted to reveal dominant topics and research trends. The 511 articles meeting the filter criteria were published by authors from a total of 66 countries. The United States contributed 190 articles, ranking first globally. Dominant topics included the role of technology, crisis communication, COVID-19 information management, information literacy and misinformation on social media. But scant attention was directed to the role of individuals situated in the middle of information flows, to the informational relevance of personal narratives circulating through social media and to country- or disaster-based comparative studies. Researchers can also observe whether COVID-19-driven informational interventions continue as standard practice after the pandemic ends.