Bibliometric Analysis of Sociological Research on Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This research aims to identify potential areas for future sociological research related to artificial intelligence (AI). The study used bibliometric analysis methods and the VosViewer pro- gram to process data. The data analyzed included 31 articles related to "sociology" and "artificial intelligence," and 1,277 articles pertinent to "social" and "artificial intelligence," all published on ScienceDirect between 2003 and 2023. Network visualization, overlay, and density analysis were used to process the data. This revealed that current sociological re- search on AI only covers five topics - artificial intelligence, sociology, technology, affects, and artificial intelligence. However, social research on AI has identified 100 topics across five datasets, with almost all research being conducted within the past decade. It is noteworthy that "sociology" is not among these 100 topics. However, these 100 topics have the potential to become sociological research subjects by applying sociological principles. The research findings suggest that sociologists can publish their scientific documents in 3,800 journals and books published by Elsevier, indicating a high probability of acceptance. Furthermore, the topics can be framed from a sociological perspective, thus providing greater insight on the subjects and potentially opening up the door to more publications by the sociologists.