Social Learning for Policy Design: A Bibliometric Analysis

Social learning is the main policy-design mechanism that involves interactions between agents. This study provides an overview of the research on policy design using social learning. Descriptive and co-citation analyses were used to identify emerging research lines and thematic similarities between scientific publications. The database used for the bibliometric analysis contained 271 articles published between 1979 and 2022 in 152 journals indexed by the SSCI. We propose a study based on the origins and the future research agenda of social learning for policy design. The results reveal that “environment”, “governance”, and “social” represent the knowledge base. These topics have evolved over time and have become established as a consolidated intellectual structure. In addition, a new topic called “media and news” has emerged, focusing on the challenges of spreading fake news and learning manipulation in a post-truth world. The cluster “Media and news” is gaining significance due to its impact on the dissemination of information and the shaping of opinions in contemporary society.