{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,27]],"date-time":"2026-02-27T02:30:38Z","timestamp":1772159438680,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":67,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,24]],"date-time":"2021-12-24T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1640304000000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["OIR"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,26]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>In order to further advance the research of social bots, based on the latest research trends and in line with international research frontiers, it is necessary to understand the global research situation in social bots.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Choosing Web of Science\u2122 Core Collections as the data sources for searching social bots research literature, this paper visually analyzes the processed items and explores the overall research progress and trends of social bots from multiple perspectives of the characteristics of publication output, major academic communities and active research topics of social bots by the method of bibliometrics.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The findings offer insights into research trends pertaining to social bots and some of the gaps are also identified. It is recommended to further expand the research objects of social bots in the future, not only focus on Twitter platform and strengthen the research of social bot real-time detection methods and the discussion of the legal and ethical issues of social bots.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Most of the existing reviews are all for the detection methods and techniques of social bots. Unlike the above reviews, this study is a systematic literature review, through the method of quantitative analysis, comprehensively sort out the research output in social bots and shows the latest research trends in this area and suggests some research indirections that need to be focused in the future. The findings will provide references for subsequent scholars to research on social bots.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Peer review<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      The peer review history for this article is available at:\n                      <jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" ext-link-type=\"uri\" xlink:href=\"https:\/\/publons.com\/publon\/10.1108\/OIR-06-2021-0336\">https:\/\/publons.com\/publon\/10.1108\/OIR-06-2021-0336<\/jats:ext-link>\n                      .\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/oir-06-2021-0336","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,22]],"date-time":"2021-12-22T13:50:27Z","timestamp":1640181027000},"page":"1076-1094","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Visual analysis of global research trends in social bots based on bibliometrics"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"46","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8063-7647","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiujuan","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2743-4856","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shanbing","family":"Gao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9715-0958","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xue","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"140","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,24]]},"reference":[{"key":"key2022092305284274000_ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"41","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2016.11.030","article-title":"Malicious accounts: dark of the social networks","volume":"79","year":"2017","journal-title":"Journal of Network and Computer Applications"},{"issue":"10-11","key":"key2022092305284274000_ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1120","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comcom.2013.04.004","article-title":"A generic statistical approach for spam detection in online social networks","volume":"36","year":"2013","journal-title":"Computer Communications"},{"key":"key2022092305284274000_ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"332","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ins.2016.08.036","article-title":"Twitter turing test: identifying social machines","volume":"372","year":"2016","journal-title":"Information Sciences"},{"issue":"8","key":"key2022092305284274000_ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1005","DOI":"10.2105\/AJPH.2018.304512","article-title":"Could social bots pose a threat to public health?","volume":"108","year":"2018","journal-title":"American Journal of Public Health"},{"issue":"1","key":"key2022092305284274000_ref005","article-title":"Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign","volume":"9","year":"2019","journal-title":"Social Network Analysis and Mining"},{"key":"key2022092305284274000_ref006","first-page":"17","article-title":"Automated diffusion? 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