Bibliometric analysis of fake news indexed in Web of Science and Scopus (2001-2020)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the scholarly contribution of literature published on the much-hyped term fake news and associated terms such as misinformation, disinformation and post-truth in various disciplines, which contributes heavily to information disorder. Design/methodology/approach The study conducted a bibliometric inquiry of literature published in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases (2001-2020) and steered in-depth quantitative content analysis of top-cited publications. The data mining covers 1,776 and 1,056 publications from WoS and Scopus databases, respectively. Bibliometrix R-package, VOSviewer Software tool and Microsoft Excel were used for analysis. Findings The study concluded that the past seven years (2014–2020) are the most productive period in studying fake news and its associated terms due to the unprecedented rise of social media and digital media. The prominent themes of the study were conducted in political, health, technology, media and social media space, whereas the output is minor in the pure science field. It is also inferred that both databases are contributing consistently in the domain of fake news literature. Practical implications The study helps in expansion of knowledge based on the research topic as well as in understanding the evolution of fake news in support of further research in this area. Originality/value Mapping scholarly contributions of scientific research provides a guiding approach and helps counter the information chaos stimulated by fake news phenomena in the digital era.