From e-learning to social-learning: Mapping development of studies on social media-supported knowledge management

Social media is bringing great challenges and wonderful opportunities for organizational learning. With support of social media, organizations may facilitate the knowledge management process within firms (e.g., knowledge sharing), then to encourage employees to promote collaborative learning behaviors from e-learning to social learning. There is a significant trend in the recent studies is increasing number of publications on social media supported knowledge management (SMKM). However, previous SMKM studies have not been depicted well by combining work of both researchers in social media study and ones in KM (which supports organizational learning) study. By using CiteSpace, this paper mapped important references that lead trends of SMKM development, authors contributing greatly to this field and hot topics of all the related articles. The way that SMKM study developed was analyzed according to the visualization of references and topics. Furthermore, the two most important groups – topics from SM and those from KM study were studied respectively to compare their development in order to show the fusion, the separation and other relationship. Finally, hottest trends and topics in these years and recent future were discussed to provide help for future work. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.