A bibliometric analysis of digital literacy research and emerging themes pre-during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Purpose Digital literacy is not the mere ability to use a digital device or know to use various software. It is a domain of exploration for sociology, psychology, education and, of course, technology. This study aims to present a quantitative analysis of the literature on digital literacy using a bibliometric approach. Design/methodology/approach Using data from the Web of Science database, the importance of the research is evaluated by reviewing 2307 publications and examining the yearly publication, field category productivity, citation structure, most cited resources, documents, most-cited authors, most productive authors, and country in the field of digital literacy. Further, a cluster analysis is conducted to see the most recurrent keywords and emerging trends in this field. At last, the authors analyzed the thematic progression of keywords over these five years based on the normalized citations. Additionally, a graphical representation of the bibliometric data using VOSviewer is presented in the paper. Findings The results suggest a steady rate of publication in this field, with most of the research published in education and library fields and the USA leading the country in this realm. The emerging themes in this field are ‘Fake News’, ‘Competence’, ‘Educational Technology’, ‘Health Literacy’, ‘Self-Efficacy’ and, interestingly, ‘COVID-19’. The results also revealed that COVID-19 has been examined and associated with fake news, higher education, social media and information literacy. Originality/value This paper provides an overall summary of the most recent research work published from 2017 to 2021 on digital literacy in the backdrop of COVID-19. The study presents the thematic progression over the years and particularly the new keywords that emerged in the limelight of the pandemic. It contributes by updating the existing body of knowledge in the field of digital literacy and presents preliminary results related to COVID-19.

A systematic review on digital literacy

“…Steps have been successfully taken to address physical access gaps, but skills gaps are still looming (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2010a ). Moreover, digital inequalities have grown larger due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they influenced the very state of health of the most vulnerable categories of population or their employability in a time when digital skills are required (Baber et al, 2022 ; Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ).…”

Digital literacy in the university setting: A literature review of empirical studies between 2010 and 2021

“…Although the presence of specialized personnel should also be highlighted, as is the case of the work elaborated by Alfonzo and Batson (2014) and Elliott et al (2018) in which a professional librarian also intervened. Or, in the work detailed by Ball (2019), where a consultant who is not a teacher but a professional expert in the use of digital devices and trained for such an occasion by a responsible brand (Apple) carried out the training at the center.…”

“…We also found investigations on interventions that had been carried out through different subjects in the study program from where the sample was taken. In this case, the samples were taken on an ad hoc basis from a specific student body which the researcher intentionally decided based on a previous intervention experience with them (Ata and Yildirim, 2019;Ball, 2019;Campbell and Kapp, 2020;Domingo-Coscolla et al, 2020;Tomczyk et al, 2020;Vinokurova et al, 2021).…”

“…The main contribution of this review lies in its comparison between pre/post-pandemic studies, which show a great increase in the use of technologies in the educational world (across the curriculum), and research work focused on measuring the competencies of these devices (Baber et al, 2022 ). These new investigations have not only followed the line of previous ones but focused on the measurement of digital literacy and its influence on it by variables such as the degree of origin, gender, age, or being a digital native or immigrant (Castañeda-Peña et al, 2015 ; Çoklar et al, 2016 ; Castañeda et al, 2018 ; Ata and Yildirim, 2019 ; Gür et al, 2019 ; Hamutoglu et al, 2019 ; Lerdpornkulrat et al, 2019 ; González et al, 2020 ; Navarro, 2020 ; De Sixte et al, 2021 ).…”

Modeling Socio-Economic Consequences of COVID-19: An Evidence From Bibliometric Analysis

“…Resulted collaborations are very low and the pandemic has a significant influence on education during the period. Baber et al (2022) have reviewed 2307 research articles extracted from the Web of Science database related to the digital literacy pre and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cluster analysis has been done to identify the rotative keywords and their thematic progression and trends over 5 years.…”