Decoding the Sociotechnical Dimensions of Digital Misinformation: A Comprehensive Literature Review

TL;DR

This comprehensive literature review analyzes sociotechnical challenges and mitigation strategies related to digital misinformation from 1993 to 2020, providing a taxonomy and categorization to guide future research and interventions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel sociotechnical taxonomy and categorization of mitigation strategies for digital misinformation, synthesizing 788 studies across multiple dimensions.

Findings

Identifies key sociotechnical challenges in misinformation

Proposes a new taxonomy for classifying false information

Highlights gaps in current mitigation approaches

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic literature review in Computer Science that provide an overview of the initiatives related to digital misinformation. This is an exploratory study that covers research from 1993 to 2020, focusing on the investigation of the phenomenon of misinformation. The review consists of 788 studies from SCOPUS, IEEE, and ACM digital libraries, synthesizing the primary research directions and sociotechnical challenges. These challenges are classified into Physical, Empirical, Syntactic, Semantic, Pragmatic, and Social dimensions, drawing from Organizational Semiotics. The mapping identifies issues related to the concept of misinformation, highlights deficiencies in mitigation strategies, discusses challenges in approaching stakeholders, and unveils various sociotechnical aspects relevant to understanding and mitigating the harmful effects of digital misinformation. As contributions, this study present a novel categorization of mitigation strategies, a sociotechnical taxonomy for classifying types of false information and elaborate on the inter-relation of sociotechnical aspects and their impacts.