Introduction: This paper examines the scientific production related to the public media in digital world, due to the increase in the last decade. Methodology: 292 indexed references in Web of Science between 2012-2022 are selected, carrying out a bibliometric analysis of citation, co-citation and co-words of scientific research on the subject. Results: The aforementioned analysis determines that the countries with the highest number of citations on the subject are Belgium, the United States, England and Austria; the source with the highest number of citations is Journalism Studies; the most cited documents are those of Van Dijck and Poell, (2015) and Aalberg et al. (2013); concerning authors, the most cited are Shanto Iyengar and Hilde Van den Bulck. Concerning the analysis of co-citations, the most mentioned papers are Bardoel, (2003), Hallin y Mancini (2004) and Brevini, B. (2013), and the most cited authors are Hallin, D. C., Van den Bulck, H. and Benson, R. In both cases, the thematic groupings are: public television services, media and politics and influence of the media on public opinion. Regarding the co-citation of sources, Media, Culture & Society; Journal of Communication and Revista Latina de Comunicacion Social, among others. The analysis of co-words shows the main research subjects: news communication, mass communication, European journalism and global journalism. Discussion and conclusions: This paper makes it possible the identification of the main trends and theoretical fundamentals in the studied field, as well as to detect emerging trends.