Hard to read, easy to cite? How national distance shapes citation patterns in communication scholarship

Citation inequality in academic scholarship has attracted sustained attention, yet macro-level structural predictors remain underexplored in communication research, particularly those rooted in national and geographic differences. This study introduces the Cultural, Administrative, Geographic and Economic (CAGE) framework to examine how cultural, administrative, geographical, and economic distances between the country of the first author’s affiliation and the United States correlate with citation counts of 5695 articles published in 13 Social Sciences Citation Index Q1 communication journals from 2018 to 2024. Using hierarchical negative binomial regression and bootstrap-based mediation analysis, we find that cultural and geographical distances are directly and positively associated with citation counts, while administrative and economic distances are not. A dissemination–recognition trade-off in communication scholarship is revealed, where cultural, geographical, and economic distances suppress article views, which in turn reduce citations. International collaboration neither moderates the direct distance–citation relationships nor the indirect paths via views. These findings illuminate how geographic heterogeneity shapes scholarly recognition through distinct and opposing mechanisms.