The COVID-19 pandemic influenced people’s everyday lives because of the health emergency and the resulting socio-economic crisis. People use social media to share experiences and search for information about the disease more than before. This paper aims at analysing the discourse on COVID-19 developed in 2020 by Italian tweeters, creating a digital storytelling of the pandemic. Employing thematic analysis, an approach used in bibliometrics to highlight the conceptual structure of a research domain, different time slices have been described, bringing out the most discussed topics. The graphical mapping of these topics allowed obtaining an easily readable representation of the discourse, paving the way for novel uses of thematic analyses in social sciences.

Textual analyses on scientific publications are increasingly employed in Bibliometrics to explore the conceptual structure of a research domain, often overlooking other rich metadata that can provide deeper insights into the scientific landscape of reference. This paper introduces an innovative technique to explore the conceptual structure of different observation units in a joint representation. The proposed strategy segments bibliographic datasets based on several metadata dimensions, such as the authors (and their characteristics), the corresponding institutions, or their geographical localisation. It provides detailed maps that depict multiple conceptual frameworks, allowing for detailed comparisons and insights in a joint visualisation. We employed these strategic diagrams to visualise and analyse the oncological research of Italian Academic Medical Centres (AMCs), particularly focusing on public institutions. The analysis focuses on how different AMCs specialise and interact, providing a comparative framework that aids AMCs themselves in directing their research strategies toward innovative fronts. Furthermore, these visualisations can assist policymakers and healthcare stakeholders in understanding the broader research environment, which is crucial for informed decision-making regarding funding and policy development related to the AMCs’ triple mission.

The concept of Regional Competitiveness (RC), in the last years, had a considerable influence on the development of strategies and policies focused on sub-national areas from an economic and social perspective. In particular, RC attracted the substantial attention of policymakers due to the possibility of evaluating and comparing different territories without any established political or conceptual framework. Conversely, scholars have long debated the meaningfulness of territorial competitiveness itself and, in case, which dimensions have to be included. This study reviewed the most recent scientific literature concerning RC with a bibliometric approach based on topic modelling. The use of a textual-based statistical approach offered an interesting insight into the RC research domain. We highlighted the topics discussed by scholars, showing the patterns emerging across years and from different publication types, and marked the differences between the vocabulary used by authors coming from EU and non-EU countries. Finally, a comparison between the RC issues coming from the literature analysis with the RC issues defined by policymakers tried to link the two standpoints followed by the institutions and the academia in a more comprehensive conceptual framework.