Abstract: Based on literature from Web of Science published between 2008 and 2017,this paper manifests the intellectual structures and research fronts of social media researches through bibliometric analysis with CiteSpace,an information visualization tool. Results demonstrate the focus of social media studies has been changing from the individual behavior of users to the mechanism of information dissemination,then turn to the impacts of media on social structure. It reflects the general clue from micro to meso to macro horizon. Under the background of technology empowerment and user-generated content,the hotspots of social media research mainly distribute on two topics,which are the Internet use behavior and the democratization of online public sphere. Meanwhile,the frontiers of social media research distribution in two dimensions:the discussion on social effects and the focus on human lifestyles.