The Relation between Media and Public Health: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends, Networks, and Thematic Evolution (1990–2025)

Abstract

Across recent decades, the relationship between media and public health has intensified, largely driven by the expansion of digital platforms and the recurrence of global health crises. Within this context, the media has become a central vector for the circulation and communication of public health information, thereby offering fertile ground for systematic academic inquiry. The present research applies a bibliometric approach to a corpus of 183 articles retrieved from the Web of Science (SSCI), following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol. Two complementary techniques (performance analysis and science mapping) were employed through Bibliometrix in R, VOSviewer, and MS Excel. The findings indicate a steady growth in scholarly output, with research clustered around specific journals and leading authors and thematic emphases on social media, misinformation, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis of international collaboration networks further underscores the prominent contributions of the United States and China in shaping scientific production within this domain.