Research Trends in the Use of Social Media as a Teaching and Learning Tool in Higher Education: Content and Bibliometric Analysis

The aim of this study was to reveal research trends from 2009 to 2021 by bibliometric analysis and to examine qualitative content of articles related to the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool in higher education. For bibliometric mapping analysis, a total of 772 articles were accessed and for content analysis, a total of 55 articles were included. Results indicate that research interest in this area is still growing, with recent studies still focused on attitudes of social media use for teaching and learning. From 2010 to 2016, studies were mainly focused on Facebook as a community of practice, blog, and for informal learning. The results also revealed that there is still a lack of theoretically informed research in this field and a tendency to use technology acceptance models to explain attitudes towards the use of social media, with less focus on pedagogical models. Learning theories were the least used by researchers to explain integration and were mostly related to studies that were aimed at exploring social media as a supportive learning tool.