Bibliometric Review of Research on Misinformation: Reflective Analysis on the Future of Communication

Abstract

The communication channels driving misinformation often carry the misinformation to elicit responses, which can turn into big threats. Users’ extensive availability and convenience in creating and facilitating user-provided content in online social media enable people with common interests, worldviews and narratives to come together and spread information/misinformation. This research aims to create an intellectual structure through reflective analysis that will help us identify the existing communication pattern that led to misinformation during recent times, also considering the pandemic times. This study analyses and reviews the emerging literature on misinformation using a bibliometric analysis approach. A total of 1,363 papers published from January 2008 to June 2022 from the Scopus database were extracted for analysis in VOS viewer, revealing 10 clusters derived from the keyword, finally coming under four broad themes. The findings revealed that the earlier studies in this area were more expressive and theoretical, and there is a need to provide simple and scientific solutions to counter the misinformation. Considering all possible adversities, this article draws concrete conclusions by offering directions and propositions to create more comprehensive systems and policies to drive a conclusive future.