Research on hotspots and trends of zhihu topics based on co-word analysis and social network: a case study of "educational technology"

This research started with the topic of educational technology of Zhihu. In order to explore other hot topics associated with it and the hotspots and trends in the parent topics of the annual questions, this research used the method of co-word analysis, social network analysis. Through digging topics network structure to understand the relationship between topics topics location and roles in the network. This research found that there were two major hot topics under educational technology topic. One was a hot spot of other professional topics closely linked to educational technology. The second was hot topics of interest to users under this topic. Through social network analysis, it was found that the structure of high-frequency topics network was relatively close and the structure of the parent topics network was loose, forming a higher tendency of centripetalism with educational technology as the core, and the topic with the core position in the network also had strong intermediary. The hotspot for future parent topics will be those at the edge of the high-frequency parent topics network, but in line with the current research hotspots in the field of educational technology.