The scientific production on post-truth, disinformation, and fake news

an analysis of the documents published in the National Meetings of Research in Information Science (1994-2022)

Abstract

The article aims to map the patterns and themes related to post-truth, misinformation, and fake news in the scientific literature of the National Meeting of Research in Information Science (ENANCIB), finding productivity by year, study groups (GTs), authors, affiliated institutions, and type of mode between 1994 and 2022. It is characterized as bibliographic research, exploratory in nature, with a qualitative and quantitative approach, content analysis and scientometrics. The National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Information Science (ANCIB) and the proceedings of ENANCIB were searched for the descriptors, "disinformation," "fake news," and "post-truth" in the title, abstract, or keywords. The corpus consisted of 40 communications. It was found that the first work appeared in 2013, with an increase in publications from 2018 onwards. Full papers were the preferred format, accounting for 28, while there were 8 extended abstracts and 4 posters. It was seen that out of the 12 GTs, 7 had communications related to the analyzed theme, with GT5 and GT3 being the most productive. The results show 99 authors, with 14 being the most productive ones. There were 24 institutions that had communications on the subject, with 16 being the most productive, such as UFPB, UFRJ, and IBICT. The most used keywords to define the works, in addition to the ones used in the search, were Information Literacy and Critical Information Literacy. It is inferred that there has been an increase in communications on the subject in recent years, due to the popularization of these terms after historical events.