Interdisciplinarity of scientific production on hate speech and social media: A bibliometric analysis

The impact of hate speech, both on a personal and social level, has increased due to social media. This has made it the focus of interest of numerous scientific journals, which increases the visibility of this global problem. The aim of this research is to analyse the basic descriptive metrics of the scientific production on hate speech and social media, as well as to explore the interdisciplinarity of these approaches. A bibliometric study has been carried out on the basis of the works indexed in the Scopus database related to the binomial 'hate speech' and 'social media' over a period of 20 years (2001 to 2020). The metrics used show that it is from 2017 onwards when this topic begins to arouse greater interest among researchers and that they constitute a sufficient indicator to consider the topic as one of interest to the scientific community. The joint research between both concepts raises its quality levels from a strictly metric point of view. 'Computer Science' and 'Social Sciences' are the two areas that clearly define the scientific production on this subject. The inversion of percentages in terms of the areas of origin of the works and citations in these two areas, is evidence of this interdisciplinarity. The indicators obtained show the relevance and transcendence of a social problem in the face of which proactive measures must be implemented.