Online Misinformation Spread: A Systematic Literature Map

Misinformation is widely and rapidly spreading on social media platforms. This could result in severe negative effects on users and the quality of online generated content. Luckily, there is a growing interest among researchers to combat this spread of misinformation on social media platforms. Despite this growing interest and to the best of the author's knowledge, there are no studies that cover and classify the types of research being published on this topic. To overcome this gap, the author performed a literature systematic mapping to produce a comprehensive overview of this research area. This results in the identification of 101 primary studies that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria of articles defined in this study. These primary studies were then categorized according to their research type, contribution type, and research focus. The results indicated that most studies focus on providing solutions to detect misinformation spread on social media platforms. In contrast, these is a lack of research on areas such as the validation and evaluation of proposed detection solutions, the use of digital intervention techniques to minimize users spread of misinformation and the management of misinformation spread. This study is meant to help domain researchers and practitioners to identify research gaps and future research opportunities on topic of this study.