Research on Disinformation in Academic Studies: Perspectives through a Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Disinformation is a phenomenon of concern to all political systems, as it poses a threat to freedom and democracy through the manipulation of public opinion aimed at eroding institutions. This paper presents a bibliometric and systematized study which allows the establishment of a comprehensive view of the research and current state of academic investigations on disinformation. To this end, a content analysis of the scientific articles indexed in Scopus up to 31 December 2023 has been carried out based on three categories of analysis: journals, authors and investigations. Similarly, a systematic study of the 50 most cited articles in this sample was performed in order to gain a deeper understanding of the nature, motivations and methodological approaches of these investigations. The results indicate that disinformation is a research topic which has gained great interest in the academic community since 2018, with special mention to the impact of COVID-19 and the vaccines against this disease. Thus, it can be concluded that disinformation is an object of study which attracts significant attention and which must be approached from transdisciplinarity to respond to a phenomenon of great complexity.