Content analysis of international research in the field of sports media using network analysis and software based visualization

The purpose of this study is to analyze the status of studies conducted in the field of sports media in the international arena. The statistical population of the present study is all articles of sport media including 1360 ones indexed in the ISI database since 1983 to 2016, which have been analyzed using Scientometrics and network analysis software. The analysis was done on the identification of quantitive nature of studies by time, superisr journals in terms of number of articles, geographical distribution of relevant studies, the collaberative network of countries and the most frequent keywords used in title, abstract and per terms. The results showed that from 1983 to 2016, the number of research conducted in the field of sports media has grown relative, from 9 papers in 1983 to 92 papers in 2016. MEDICINE AND SCIENCE IN SPORTS AND EXERCISE magazine published 133 articles with the largest share in sport media. The United States, 670 articles and 49% of published articles, has the largest share of sports media coverage. The words "sport", "medium", and "performance", with 138, 129, and 124, are the most frequent in the title and abstract of the published articles, and the keywords of rehabilitation, community and internet are the most frequent words in the keywords espectively of these articles.