Government Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Bibliometric Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71238/jcmpl.v1i01.195Abstract
Governments increasingly rely on social media to inform, reassure, and mobilize citizens during crises, yet the scholarly field examining this practice remains dispersed across public relations, public administration, disaster management, and public health. This study maps the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and collaboration patterns of research on government crisis communication on social media through a bibliometric analysis. A total of 753 Scopus-indexed documents published between 1993 and 2026 were analyzed using VOSviewer through keyword co-occurrence, co-authorship, and citation analyses. The results show four thematic clusters: disaster and emergency communication via social networking platforms, core crisis communication and public relations, pandemic governance and public behavior, and health communication with misinformation. Research output accelerated sharply after 2020, with recent attention shifting toward misinformation, disinformation, SARS-CoV-2, and survey-based studies of public compliance. The United States dominates publication output and collaboration, followed by China, Spain, and the United Kingdom, while author networks remain fragmented around a small number of productive scholars. The most cited works emphasize trust, message strategy, and the role of social media in local government and pandemic communication. This study offers a roadmap for future research and practical insights for governments seeking credible, dialogic, and misinformation-resilient crisis communication.
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