The Global Landscape of Media Multitasking: Identifying Research Gaps and Future Directions Through Bibliometric Synthesis (1991-2025)

Abstract

Media multitasking has emerged as a pervasive behavior in contemporary digital environments, prompting a significant expansion in scholarly inquiry across psychology, education, and communication studies. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of media multitasking research, mapping its global evolution, intellectual structures, and thematic trajectories over three decades. Using 1,093 publications retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (1991-2025), the study applies performance indicators, co-authorship and collaboration networks, co-citation structures, document coupling, and thematic evolution analyses using R and the bibliometrix package. Findings reveal a rapidly expanding yet unevenly distributed research landscape, dominated by high-impact journals and a small group of influential authors, institutions, and countries. Intellectual structures are anchored in cognitive-control and performance-oriented theories, which serve as central connectors between educational, socioemotional, advertising, and neurocognitive clusters. Thematic evolution demonstrates a clear transition from early dual-task and television-based paradigms toward socially embedded multitasking, academic performance concerns, and AI-driven analytical techniques. Despite significant development, the field remains fragmented, with limited integration across cognitive, educational, and socioemotional perspectives and persistent geographic imbalances. The study highlights methodological gaps, the need for improved measurement techniques, and the emerging role of computational and machine-learning methods in advancing the field. Implications for future interdisciplinary research, educational intervention design, and global knowledge equity are discussed.

Keywords: Media Multitasking, Bibliometric Analysis, Cognitive Control, Academic Performance, Thematic Evolution, Digital Behavior