Research on disinformation in Spain. Analysis of thematic trends through a systematic literature review

Abstract

Disinformation is one of the great challenges that communication research has addressed in the last five years. It is therefore necessary to establish a first state of the art on the response of Spanish researchers to this problem. This paper aims to discover the most frequent objetos of study related to disinformation published in Spanish journals, in the period 2016-2021. It is also intended to elaborate a general cartography of these topics. A systematic literature review was conducted through a Mixed Method Research Design integrating qualitative analysis and descriptive and inferential statistics. Although a significant thematic dispersion is observed, there is a tendency towards the study of the solutions to address this problem, especially from the journalistic field, taking fact-checking as a relevant actor. Likewise, this study detects a high interest in the discursive dimension of the phenomenon and the analysis of its possible causes; as opposed to other fundamental topics to understand the problem, such as the spread of false content online and the biases operating in its reception.