Academic Diffusion On Understanding Media:Status, Features And Path

Several methods of bibliometrics have been used to research the academic diffusion characteristics of Understanding Media such as citation analysis, information visualization, word frequency statistics and its like. The main conclusions of this paper are made as follows.First, the cited history curve of Understanding Media confirmed three times of McLuhan Boom in the international academic circles. Second, North America is the main diffusion areas, then Europe, Asia and Oceania. Third,106 different subject categories have been affected by Understanding Media. Besides communication, education, literature, psychology and computer science are the main diffusion subject categories. Forth, film, radio and television, sociology and linguistics are the most active subjects, then the education research and psychology, in the cross influence of communication and its related subjects severed by Understanding Media. In the aspect of evolution of diffusion time, the subjects from humanities and social sciences are the spread point, then flowing to science & engineering and medical domain. Fifth, the top ten themes of academic diffusion of Understanding Media refer to the internet technology and its application research, consumer behavior and identity research, McLuhan and global village theory, social media, new media and education, spatial communication, virtual community, cultural psychology, media and politics, mass media and journalism, and the global village theory is the continuous focus in the academic circles. Sixth, media technology, global village, electronic media are the three main common concerns. Seventh, there are 23 relative documents of Understanding Media which are divided into five literature sets, and the literature group of North American media ecology is the main literature set. The 23 relative authors of McLuhan can be divided into five sets, and the school of North America media ecology is the main author cluster. Besides, McLuhan is related to the main representative author of post-structuralism of France and Germany, Birmingham school culture research and the Frankfurt school author cluster. Eighth, Chinese scholars and international scholars jointly push the third McLuhan Boom. But it is not obvious that cross-border spread of Understanding Media in China and its research feature of Chinese academics, compared to international academic community.