Terrorism (1990 - 2024)

8/9/2024

Data Source: Dimensions

CiteSpace is distributed with a demo project on Terrorism research (1990-2003) in the original format from the Web of Science. This demo project revealed several major themes up to 2003, including mental health issues resulted from the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, bioterrorism, especially in connection with the possible unbearable burden on medical and health care systems, and earlier concentrations on physical injuries. A few days ago, I did a new search using the sample query "terroris*" in titles and abstracts on Dimensions and got 105,152 records. Export the search results for bibliographic mapping, then convert the exported CSV files in CiteSpace.

The following overview shows that the intellectual landscape has significantly expanded beyond the landmarks emerged after the terrorist attacks in 2001. A massive new land on the right-hand side represents major contributions after 2003.

The following landscape view shows that the largest 3 clusters (#0, #1, and #2) have essentially faded out. #3 Terrorism and Social Psychology is the largest among the more recently emerged thematic clusters, whereas the earliest cluster is #7 Conflict and Terrorism Studies. In contrast, #5 Trauma and Emergency Medicine appears to be the most persistent one that spans several decades.

We know that potentially transformative research may alter the global structure of a field of research by changing interrelationships between distinct clusters. The Link Walkthrough function interactively steps through the time slices, one year or one month at a time so that we can focus on recurring patterns that standout between particular clusters. Here is a link to a video of link walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_LWrLE2C4U

The heatmap below highlights hot areas based on the density of closely related publications.

The cluster dependency links show a significant reliance of #11 Mental Health and Trauma on #1 Mental Health Challenges. Note the most cited works in #1 are Schuster (2001) and Galea (2002), which we are already familiar with from the previously mentioned Demo project. The two most cited works in #11 are published in 2013 and 2014, more than 10 years later than #1.

The Link Walkthrough would show that #1 and #11 have strong and recurring ties, although these ties are evidently not strong enough to make the two distinct clusters merge altogether.

The two concept trees are generated by importing the cluster information saved for #1 and #11, respectively. Noun phrases with 2-5 words are extracted and subsequently visualized as a concept tree. Here is the concept tree for #1. The leading concept is terrorist attacks, which is in turn predominated by New York City, i.e., terrorist attacks in New York City at the World Trade Center. Psychological impact such as PTSD and mental health as well as general population, media exposure, and risk factors are also featured.

The #11's concept tree is clearly predominated by Oslo bombing in 2011 and rocket attacks. The common themes of PTSD, general population, and gender difference are included. Unique topics in #11 including diagnostic criteria and first responders, although relevant terms such as risk factors appeared in the earlier #1. The concept tree is interactive. We can explore a collection of publications through the hierarchical structure of the high-frequency noun phrases. In this way, the higher-level thematic components of a cluster can be explored in their original contexts.