A Bibliometric Analysis of Master’s and Doctoral Theses Written on Health Communication: A Critical Review

Considering many newly opened private health institutions, health sector seems to have gained great momentum in Turkey recently. However, it is a serious matter of debate that public health organizations constantly are dependent on receiving foreign services, neo-liberal policies embedded in health sector and how Health Transformation Program helps th public health integration with these policies. The aim of this paper is to analyze the way academic publications grasp this reality in Turkey as an environment of structural transformations in the health sector. Master’s and doctoral theses written on this field have been subjected to a critical evaluation approach through a bibliometric analysis. As a result, it has been found that academic publications don’t take a critical approach toward health sector policies and reflections of these policies on daily life. They are still under the influence of mainstream communication research and methodologically are based on the quantitative research techniques, which claim to measure the attitudes and behaviors of people.