JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The use of social media platforms to seek information continues to increase worldwide. Social media platforms can be used to disseminate important information to several people across the globe instantaneously. However, the viral nature of social media platforms also makes it easy to share misinformation, unverified information, and fake news. The unprecedented reliance on social media platforms to seek information about the virus during the Covid-19 pandemic brought with it increased incidents of misinformation about the virus on social media platforms. Consequently, there was an increase in the number of scientific publications related to the role of social media in the dissemination of health misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Health misinformation, especially in periods of global public health disasters, can lead to the erosion of trust in policymakers at best, and fatal consequences at worst.

Objective:

This manuscript reports on a bibliometric analysis aimed at quantifying scientific productivity, identifying trending keywords and niche topics, the most influential authors and publication platforms, as well as the global collaboration between authors on topics related to the role of social media in health misinformation since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Methods:

The Scopus database was accessed on 2 April 2023 using the following search phrases: ("Health”) AND (“Misinformation" OR "Disinformation" OR "Fake News") AND ("Social media" OR "Twitter" OR "Facebook") AND (“Transmit” OR “Drive” OR “Spread”) AND ("Pandemic" OR "Covid-19" OR "Covid-19 vaccine"). A total of 405 research papers published between 2020 and April 2023 were included in the bibliometric analysis, using Microsoft Excel, the Scopus analysis tool, VOSviewer, and the Biblioshiny package in Bibliometrix for RStudio.

Results:

The highest number of publications was in 2022 (n=167). The majority of publications were articles (n=290). The Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) was the most popular publication platform (n=31). Authors from the United States of America (USA) collaborated the most, with 120 co-authored papers. The most influential authors with the highest number of citations were Romer and Jamieson [1]. The keywords Covid-19, misinformation, and social media were the top three trending keywords, while niche topics like sentiment analysis, artificial intelligence, and deep learning were also revealed.

Conclusions:

Collaborations between authors can increase their productivity and citation counts. Niche topics like sentiment analysis, artificial intelligence, and deep learning, could be exploited by researchers in future studies to analyze the influence of social media on health misinformation during periods of global public health emergencies.