Abstract:As online discourses are on the rise, online multimodal studies have drawn massive attention from the international academia in recent years. To examine the progress in international online multimodal research, this paper reviews 158 papers included in Social Sciences Citation Index from 2004 to 2018. The analysis, adopting a content analytic method, was conducted from three dimensions:the overall research trend, the research theme and the methodological issues. The study was concluded with suggestions for promoting and advancing the domestic online multimodal studies in China.