Mapping the Landscape of Netnographic Research: A Bibliometric Study of Social Interactions and Digital Culture

Abstract

Introduction: Netnography is a research method that has emerged in response to the growing popularity of online communication and social networks. Aim: To analyze communication patterns about netnography in the Scopus database. Methods: A bibliometric study was conducted in the Scopus database on netnography. The analysis was conducted globally, by country, and by institution. Results: A total of 11173 documents and 2213 authors were recovered. 35,1% of the documents were open access. The global field-weighted citation impact was 1,27. the most productive ones in the following order: United Kingdom (275 documents), United States (223 documents), Australia (165 documents), Brazil (100 documents), and France (83 documents). Conclusions: The results show that netnography is an emerging area of research, with a wide geographic and thematic diversity, that has experienced steady growth in recent years and is being explored in a variety of contexts, from market research to the analysis of social dynamics online.