Mapping the field of communication technology research in Asia: content analysis and text mining of SSCI journal articles 1995–2014

Given the critical role of communication technologies in Asia’s robust economic, cultural, and technological performance in the current century, this study maps the landscape of communication technology research in Asia of the recent two decades. Using a combination of content analysis and text mining-based semantic network analysis, this paper reviews 272 articles on Asian communication technology published in SSCI communication journals between 1995 and 2014. Our results show that East Asia was the most studied region in this field. Internet was the most popular keyword, and it was also the most studied communication technology followed by mobile phone, information communication technologies, and social media. Adopting a variety of methodologies and balancing between qualitative and quantitative, most of these studies took the psychological micro-level scope. When it comes to technology–context relation, the majority of research took the technology determinism perspective. Asian-based scholars leaned to technology determinism and are more likely to see technology as a change force for Asia, whereas the Western-based counterparts viewed Asian context as a filter and took macro-level scope in their research more often. The technology–context relationship and regional diversity discussed in this paper also shed light on future studies to make theoretical contributions to this important research field.