Sociological Literature During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A VOSviewer Model of Governance, Institutional Trust, Resilience, and Digital Interaction

Resumen

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed sociological research by generating multidimensional scientific literature focused on governance, institutional trust, resilience, and digital interaction. The objective of the present study was to estimate a VOSviewer bibliometric model explaining the structural relationships among these constructs within sociological literature published during the pandemic period. A quantitative, non-experimental, crosssectional, and exploratory design was implemented through bibliometric mapping and semantic network analysis. The documentary corpus consisted of indexed publications retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science between 2020 and 2025. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were established according to scientific quality, thematic relevance, and metadata consistency. The representative sample was estimated using a finite population sampling formula with a 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error. Variables were operationalized through thematic indicators associated with governance, institutional trust, resilience, digital interaction, and thematic centrality. The VOSviewer model incorporated co-occurrence matrices, association strength coefficients, modularity estimators, citation density indicators, and structural regression coefficients. Results showed statistically significant semantic trajectories among all constructs, with digital interaction and governance presenting the strongest effects on thematic centrality. Institutional trust emerged as a central connector between governance and resilience, while resilience functioned as an adaptive construct integrating institutional and technological dimensions. The bibliometric network revealed high-density thematic clusters, elevated connectivity coefficients, and strong semantic cohesion across sociological pandemic literature. The findings confirmed the general hypothesis that sociological scientific production during the pandemic evolved toward an interconnected explanatory system integrating institutional coordination, collective adaptation, legitimacy, and technological mediation. The study contributes methodologically by integrating bibliometric equations, statistical parameters, thematic indicators, and semantic trajectories into a unified VOSviewer framework capable of explaining the evolution of sociological knowledge during global crises.