Cyberbullying research - Alignment to sustainable development and impact of COVID-19: Bibliometrics and science mapping analysis

The explosive growth and online media usage have transformed the communication landscape globally. Social media platforms have become a thriving ground for online exploitation and Cyberbullying, a high priority challenge in many countries (Gottschalk, 2022). Our study aims to provide a bibliometric overview of Cyberbullying research between 2010 and 2021, including a new analysis through the lens of sustainable development and the impact of COVID-19. We introduce altmetrics to assess the social media attention of publications. Analysis of 7045 publications, of which 1149 publications are directly aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 123 publications related to COVID-19 are presented. Science mapping of countries and journals, prolific authors, and institutions, along with gender-related contributions, are captured in this study. Computers in Human Behavior is the most prolific journal in terms of publications and citations. The top three SDG are SDG16 peace, justice, and strong institutions, SDG4 Quality education, and SDG3 Good health and well-being. Within each SDG, we find focussed studies on the themes relating to psychological impact, prior exposure to violence, inequality and gender biases, lack of awareness and need for education, and social support and their implications for sustainable development. Further, studies on COVID-19 impact revealed a definitive increase in occurrences of Cyberbullying stemming from concurrent infodemics and confinement-induced digital addiction. Asian countries contributed to over 20% of the studies during the pandemic. We offer suggestions for future studies on shifting focus on populous developing economies, longitudinal studies of interventions, and a critical need to enhance technologies for auto-detection in multilingual contexts.