Global Research on Covid-19 Misinformation on Social Media: A Scientometric Assessment of Publications during 2020-21

Abstract

 This paper analyses global research publications (317 records) on the topic ‘Covid 19 Misinformation on Social Media’, based on bibliometric indicators, using Scopus database during 2020-21. The study has been undertaken with the aim to identify key countries, research organisations, and the authors leading the research in the subject. The study used VOSviewer software for mapping network interactions among the key countries and keywords co-occurrences. The results reveal that a 19.24% share of the total output appeared as sponsored research publications and a 80.76% share as regular research publications. A 5.75% share of the total output accounted for highly cited publications (60 to 257 citations per paper). A total of 317 research publications were contributed by 291 authors from 232 global organizations spread across 84 countries. The USA has emerged as the most productive country in the world with a 34.38% share, followed by UK (12.93%), India (9.15%) share. The top authors identified in terms of most research productivity hail from the USA, Sweden, and Jordan. ‘Medicine’ was the most preferred area of research studies on ‘Covid - 19’ misinformation. It accounted for a 65.93% share, followed by Social Sciences (15.46%), Computer Science (9.46%), etc. In addition, the study identified most productive journal titles and most cited journal titles in the subject.