Mapping the intellectual landscape of digital social networks: a bibliometric and citation network analysis

Abstract Network science and digital social network research span sociology, communication, and computational modeling, yet the field’s intellectual structure and cross-paradigm connectivity remain insufficiently characterized. Using records retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (n = 1,859; queried on 21 November 2024), we conduct a bibliometric, keyword co-occurrence, and citation-network analysis with CiteSpace, VOSviewer, Gephi, and NetworkX. The citation landscape exhibits a strongly centralized core (a largest connected component of 1,293 papers) surrounded by numerous small, weakly connected components, indicating a pronounced core–periphery organization. Keyword clustering and citation-burst analysis further reveal a thematic shift from classic sociological mechanisms (e.g., homophily and tie formation) toward algorithmically mediated communication and misinformation-related topics. We also highlight a set of highly central bridging works that connect otherwise separated thematic communities, suggesting that interdisciplinary exchange is concentrated around a limited number of canonical references.