Mapping the research trends on political communication in Asia: A bibliometric analysis using R package and VOS

Abstract

Political communication refers to developing and exchanging political ideas and opinions among the general public, elected officials, political parties and affiliated organisations like the media. Recent years have seen an enormous amount of literature in the area of political communication owing to the growing interest of academics in the subject. Using the R package bibliometrix and the Visualisation of Similarities viewer programme, this study aims to enhance graphical mapping of the bibliographic data for political communication publications in select countries of Asia. The results show that, especially since 2016, scholars have been paying more and more attention to the study of political communication in the age of fake news, hyperpolarization, etc. They also show that research publications on the topics of communication, China, Taiwan, India, the USA, social media, articles, politics, the internet, decision-making, democracy, governance and elections are gaining momentum in recent years. Additionally, the findings show that the top three nations for publishing articles on political communication are the USA, China and Russia. The findings also reveal that even scholars from non-democratic or less democratic countries have made substantial attempts to improve political communication studies, despite the fact that political communication is one of the most crucial components in democratic countries.