Abstract:

Social media has become very important for tourism stakeholders with the development of information and communication technologies. In this study, it is aimed to examine the conceptual, social and intellectual structure as well as the general descriptive structure of social media research in the tourism literature. For this purpose, 1289 research articles were downloaded from the WoS database and bibliometric analyses were conducted to the data set by using the R statistics program. When the research findings are examined, it is seen that the average number of citations is high, although the average age of publication is relatively young, effective authors and journals vary according to different metrics, effective authors in the collaboration network such as Rob Law are at the forefront of all other metrics, and social media platforms offer important opportunities for both practitioners and researchers. Furthermore, geographical proximity and language unions are effective in country collaborations. It has been determined that there are references to current research such as social media even from the 1980s. It is thought that the research findings will guide researchers who want to conduct research on social media in tourism and tourism stakeholders who will use social media.

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