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Forty years after the publication of the first articles indexed in Web of Science related to disinformation, it seems timely to construct an x-ray of its presence in academic research in order to objectively set out the scope achieved. To this end a mixed methodology is applied, which combines bibliographical with bibliometric analysis to gather qualitative and quantitative data, enabling the volume and impact of scientific publications to be measured.

This chapter therefore aims to analyze the scientific production on disinformation issues published in journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) without any temporal restriction, that is, from 1900 until August 2020. The sample was put together on the basis of articles housed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database, which is the most relevant and pertinent index for the area of Communication. Following the analysis of the conceptual articles related to disinformation (Wardle 2017, 2018; Tandoc et al. 2018), a list of terms used for the consultation was designed. The following search string was applied:

(disinformation* OR misinformation* OR “misleading information*” OR “manipulated new*” OR “fake new*” OR “fact* check*” OR “false content*” OR “false new*” OR “post-truth” OR “verification tool*” OR “verif* process*” OR “information* disorder*” OR “hybrid media system”).

This search was conducted on the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the articles published by all SSCI publications, without considering book reviews or proceedings. Initially, 536 references were localized in the general category of Social Sciences, and this list was subjected to a bibliometric analysis referring to the following indicators: temporal evolution, authorship, affiliation, language, country of production, journal, and most-cited articles.

A codifier examined all the articles in full, eliminated reiterations, and for the content analysis selected only those empirical investigations whose pivotal issue was disinformation, obtaining a final sample of 434 articles. In addition, a deductive codebook was implemented, and labels created manually on Zotero were applied in order to classify and categorize the information. In this second phase the registered variables belonged to the following categories: (i) theme; (ii) subtheme; (iii) platform analyzed; (iv) methodological focus; and (v) tools employed. The thematic classification used a standard taxonomy proposed by the International Communication Association (ICA), which establishes 24 sections within the Communication area.

The following pages present a chronological evolution of the interest that disinformation has aroused in the academic sphere, which journals have provided more extensive coverage, the most productive geographical areas, the most-cited works, the most outstanding authors and their affiliations, the co-authorships generated, the approaches addressed, and the methodologies employed in these investigations.