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. 2021 Dec 9;16(12):e0260080.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260080. eCollection 2021.

A systematic review on fake news research through the lens of news creation and consumption: Research efforts, challenges, and future directions

Bogoan Kim  1 , Aiping Xiong  2 , Dongwon Lee  2 , Kyungsik Han  1
Affiliations

A systematic review on fake news research through the lens of news creation and consumption: Research efforts, challenges, and future directions

Bogoan Kim et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: Although fake news creation and consumption are mutually related and can be changed to one another, our review indicates that a significant amount of research has primarily focused on news creation. To mitigate this research gap, we present a comprehensive survey of fake news research, conducted in the fields of computer and social sciences, through the lens of news creation and consumption with internal and external factors.

Methods: We collect 2,277 fake news-related literature searching six primary publishers (ACM, IEEE, arXiv, APA, ELSEVIER, and Wiley) from July to September 2020. These articles are screened according to specific inclusion criteria (see Fig 1). Eligible literature are categorized, and temporal trends of fake news research are examined.

Results: As a way to acquire more comprehensive understandings of fake news and identify effective countermeasures, our review suggests (1) developing a computational model that considers the characteristics of news consumption environments leveraging insights from social science, (2) understanding the diversity of news consumers through mental models, and (3) increasing consumers' awareness of the characteristics and impacts of fake news through the support of transparent information access and education.

Conclusion: We discuss the importance and direction of supporting one's "digital media literacy" in various news generation and consumption environments through the convergence of computational and social science research.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. PRISMA flow chart of literature search for fake news from 2010 to 2020.
Fig 2
Fig 2. A visualization of 182 fake news-related papers.
The papers were published in IEEE, ACM, ELSEVIER, arXiv, Wiley, APA from 2010 to 2020 classified by publisher, main category, sub category, and evaluation method (left to right).
Fig 3
Fig 3. An overview of the survey on fake news research in this paper.
We investigate fake news research trend (Section 2), and examine fake news creation and consumption through the lenses of external and internal factors. We also investigate research efforts to mitigate external factors of fake news creation and consumption: (a) indicates fake news creation (Section 3), and (b) indicates fake news consumption (Section 4). “Possible moves” indicates that news consumers “possibly” create/propagate fake news without being aware of any negative impact.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Fake news research trends of the past decade (2010–2020).
We collected 2,277 fake news related-papers and randomly chose and categorized 200 papers. Each marker indicates the number of fake news studies per type published in a given year. Fig 4(a) shows a research trend of news creation and consumption (main category). Fig 4(b) and 4(c) show a trend of the sub-categories of news creation and consumption. In Fig 4(b), “Miscellaneous” includes studies on stance/propaganda detection and a survey paper. In Fig 4(c), “Data-driven fake news trend analysis” mainly covers the studies reporting the influence of fake news that spread around specific political/social events (e.g., fake news in Presidential Election 2016, Rumor in Weibo after 2015 Tianjin explosions). “Conspiracy theory” refers to an unverified rumor that was passed on to the public.
Fig 5
Fig 5. External factors: Fake news creation facilitators.
We identify two external factors—The unification of news and the misuse of AI technology—That facilitate fake news creation.
Fig 6
Fig 6. Two internal factors of fake news consumption: Cognitive biases and personal traits.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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