The Impact of Covid- on Thematic Trends in Humanities and Social Sciences: A Scientometric Analysis of European, Asian, and American Continental Studies

The purpose of this study is to identify the thematic trends of scientific publications in the fields of humanities and social sciences, considering the impact of Covid-19. The study utilizes a descriptive approach with a scientometric and content analysis method, incorporating co-word analysis and social network analysis techniques. The research population comprises Covid-19 studies in the fields of humanities and social sciences in the Web of Science, conducted between 2019 and 2021, involving the top countries in three prominent continents. CiteSpace, Bibexcel, and Gephi software were used to analyze the data, while VOSviewer software was utilized to visualize the intellectual structure. The analysis reveals that religion, spirituality, public health, religiosity, mental health, epidemics, depression, crisis, social media, anxiety, and ethics are significant keywords in research within the humanities and social sciences. Additionally, thematic overlap is observed in the clusters of China and Spain and India, Turkey, Britain, Italy, United States, Canada, and Brazil, with a greater accumulation of clusters in the studies of Turkey, Canada, and Brazil. In addition, it can be said that the focus of studies in the Americas is more on social sciences than on studies in the other two continents.