Exploring Content Moderation Research: Insights from a Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Rapid technological advances have intensified user-content interactions, leading to real-world consequences and the implementation of complex regulation mechanisms such as AI filtering and industrial and user moderation. This study aims to introduce the contemporary topics surrounding the subject by comprehensively examining the content moderation research by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 202 publications between 2016 and 2023 from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. This study aims to identify the influential authors, universities, countries, journals, funding agencies, network maps of keywords, and co-authorship. The findings of this study demonstrate that the Queensland University of Technology is the most influential in the field. The United States of America, England, and Australia are the most productive countries. The National Science Foundation and the European Research Council are the most supporting funding institutions. New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, and Big Data & Society are the most influential journals. Ysabel Gerrard is the most productive author. Seven clusters occur in author collaboration networks. The network map of the keywords suggests that researchers mainly focus on social media; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are the most investigated platforms. There is a shift from transparency to hate speech and misinformation among the research themes. The academic research has exhibited a consistent upward trajectory since 2016. Given the demonstrable momentum of interest in this field, it is reasonable to anticipate a further increase in research with a diverse array of academic disciplines.