Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Communication Trust

Abstract—The aim of this study is to explore the intellectual structure of communication trust research in the last decade, this study identified the most important publications and the most influential scholars as well as the correlations among these scholar’s publications. In this study, bibliometric and tag cloud analysis techniques are used to investigate the intellectual pillars of the communication trust literature. By analyzing 152,181 citations of 3,463 articles published in SSCI journal in commu-nication trust area between 2003 and 2012, this study maps a knowledge network of communication trust studies. The mapping of the intellectual structure of communication trust studies indicates that communication trust has somehow created its own literature and that it has gained the reputation as a legitimate academic field, with communication trust specific journals gaining the status required for an independent research field, such as the Risk Analysis and The Journal of Marketing Information Society. The results of the mapping can help identify the research direction of communication trust research and provide a valuable tool for researchers to access the literature in this area.