Public Relations Review 50 (2024) 102470 0363-8111/© 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. Social media in public relations scholarship: A database-based systematic review of published articles from 2015 to 2020 Hui Zhang Department of Communication, Bridgewater State University, USA A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Social media Public relations Social media research in public relations Systematic review Database ABSTRACT This systematic review examined social media research in public relations scholarship in English language be- tween 2015 and 2020 by analyzing 380 articles from 143 journals sampled from multidisciplinary research databases. The analysis focused on research methods, data collection sources, type of social media being studied, use of theoretical frameworks, and differences between PR journals and non-PR journals. Key findings include: (a) PR journals and a few communication journals, which have often been sampled in the existing review studies, contributed to less than half (46.84 %) of the articles included, (b) significant differences between PR journals and non-PR journals in use of survey (X 2 (1, N = 380) = 4.33, p = .04), and use of theoretical frameworks (X 2 (1, N = 380) = 12.70, p < .001), (c) social media (N = 380, 36.6 %), together with platforms that are off social media but online (N = 380, 37.1 %), was the most frequently used data collection source, and (d) about half (N = 380, 47.2 %) of the articles belonged to the lower level on the extent of theoretical framework use continuum. Implications of these findings for future systematic review studies in public relations are discussed. 1. Introduction This study sets out to systematically review social media research in public relations between 2015 and 2020. Systematic review is a research study of research studies. As its name implies, it typically involves a detailed and comprehensive plan and search strategy derived a priori, with the goal of reducing bias by identifying, appraising, and synthe- sizing all relevant studies on a particular topic (Uman, 2011). To qualify as a systematic review, a review needs to adhere to standards of trans- parency and reproducibility. In contrast to traditional reviews, it ensures a more comprehensive overview of a chosen topic using structured research questions, systematic search strategies, sampling criteria, and coding procedure (Roth-Cohen & Avidar, 2022). Findings of systematic reviews are valuable for public relations scholarship as they synthesize and summarize existing studies using rigorous methodologies. They are important at least in the following four reasons. One, systematic reviews utilizing rigorous and transparent methodologies can enhance the replicability of the review, and the reliability and validity of the conclusions drawn from the review. Two, systematic reviews offer a time-efficient solution for scholars to keep up with social media research. As the volume of social media research grows, it becomes more challenging for individual scholars to keep up with all new studies. Systematic reviews condense the available evidence, saving time for editors and researchers who need to stay current in the field. Three, systematic reviews can reduce bias. The re- view procedure is designed to reduce bias by utilizing rigorous and transparent methods for study selection, data extraction and synthesis. And four, systematic reviews can pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or inconsistencies. Identifying gaps and inconsistencies in the literature helps guide future research directions and informs scholars about where additional studies are needed. This methodology has gained popularity in public relations schol- arship. For example, at least two systematic review studies on social media were published just in Public Relations Review in recent two years (Roth-Cohen & Avidar, 2022; Wang et al., 2021). However, public re- lations scholars who conduct systematic reviews have faced methodo- logical challenges. One of the reasons is that PR scholarship occurs not only in PR journals but also in various publication venues. Scholars who use a journal-based approach to sample social media research in PR often result in different number of journals. For example, a review of development of social media in PR published in PRism included two leading academic public relations journals (Ju et al., 2021). Two more comprehensive systematic reviews published in Public Relations Review included nine journals (Roth-Cohen & Avidar, 2022) and fourteen journals (Wang et al., 2021) respectively. What these journal-based re- view studies have in common is that they rely on top journals in public E-mail address: Hui.Zhang@bridgew.edu. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pubrev https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2024.102470 Received 30 August 2023; Received in revised form 8 May 2024; Accepted 21 May 2024