Knowledge networking on Sociology: network analysis of blogs, YouTube videos and tweets about Sociology

Abstract

While mainstream scientific knowledge production have been widely studied in recent years with the development of scientometrics and bibliometrics, an emergent number of studies have focused on alternative sources of production and dissemination of knowledge such as blogs, YouTube videos and comments on Twitter. These online sources of knowledge become relevant in fields such as Sociology, where some academics seek to bring the sociological knowledge to the general population. To explore which knowledge on Sociology is produced and disseminated, and how is organized in these online sources, we analyze the knowledge networking of blogs, YouTube videos and tweets on Twitter using network analysis approach. Specifically, the present research analyzes the hyperlink network of the main blogs on Sociology, the networks of tags used to classify videos on Sociology hosted on YouTube, and the network of hashtags linked to #sociología on Twitter. The main results point out the existence of a cohesive and strongly connected community of blogs on Sociology, the very low presence of YouTube videos on Sociology in Spanish, and Sociology on Twitter is linked to others social sciences, classical scholars and social media