Abstract

This review maps the scientific literature on social media as a language learning environment published between 2008 and 2019. Over 1,600 journals from the Scopus database were surveyed and 396 documents were analyzed using bibliometric analysis. The findings indicate that this field of interest has exponentially grown in the past 12 years and is likely to progress in the next several years. Although the scientific output is highly concentrated on the ten leading countries, the data also indicates its wide geographical distribution. As the first review to cover the 17 most popular social media platforms, the qualitative analysis of the findings of each study provided overwhelming evidence on the positive impact of social media as a language learning and teaching environment. The paper also reveals that high-profile platforms, such as Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, and Twitter remain to attract the greatest attention from language learning scholars. This result was attributed to their multiple and flexible communication affordances, wide geographical distribution, and large number of active users. The paper concludes with implications for social media adoption and future studies.

摘要

这篇综述绘制了 2008 年至 2019 年间出版的关于社交媒体作为语言学习环境的科学文献。对来自 Scopus 数据库的 1,600 多种期刊进行了调查，并使用文献计量分析对 396 份文件进行了分析。调查结果表明，这一兴趣领域在过去 12 年呈指数级增长，并可能在未来几年取得进展。尽管科学产出高度集中在前十位国家，但数据也表明其广泛的地域分布。作为首次涵盖 17 个最受欢迎的社交媒体平台的评论，对每项研究结果的定性分析为社交媒体作为语言学习和教学环境的积极影响提供了压倒性的证据。该论文还揭示了一些知名平台，例如 Facebook，Skype、WhatsApp 和 Twitter 仍然吸引着语言学习学者的最大关注。这一结果归因于其多种灵活的通信能力、广泛的地理分布和大量的活跃用户。本文总结了对社交媒体采用和未来研究的影响。