Research Trends and Implications for Domestic and International Digital Literacy Using Keyword Network Analysis before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

In addition to the rapidly c hanging digital environment, the need for digital literacy is increasing for all members of society today due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, digital literacy consisted of a level of simple understanding and utilization of computer-based digital texts, but recently it has developed into the ability to diagnose and solve problems based on ethical awareness. In particular, COVID-19 is considered a major inflection point in digital literacy research in that it has resulted in the transfer of most of its activities from offline to online. Therefore, in this study, changes in domestic and international digital literacy research starting in 2020, when COVID-19 started and spread, and the implications thereof were analyzed. Network analysis was conducted by dividing 797 papers on the subject of domestic and international digital literacy into two periods based on their publication date, and quantitative changes in research, keyword frequency, keyword connection centrality, and cluster maps were identified. Research related to digital literacy has steadily increased in all periods in Korea and (except for the first period) abroad, but especially in Korea, which showed an increase of 180% in the second period. In addition, an examination of the keywords appearing in the study confirmed that the average number increased during the second period more than 2.5 times as much as during the first period in both domestic and international research, and the clusters also became more diversified. In addition, it was confirmed that “education” and direct and indirect keywords appeared as key research areas of digital literacy throughout the entire period, and from the first to the second period, digital literacy expanded from the ability to use simple digital tools to diagnosing and solving problems.