The Dark Side of News Consumption: A Systematic Review on Private Messaging Networks Studies and Journalism

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of news sharing through private messaging apps. This shift presents significant challenges for journalism, particularly in terms of media trust and news dissemination. Despite the importance of studying the role of private messaging apps in shaping public opinion, there is a lack of systematic approaches. After a scientific literature review including terms such as "WhatsApp", "Telegram", and "mesospaces", content and thematic analyses were carried out to identify research methods and topics. A total of 61 documents was retrieved in late 2022, 53 of which are articles in WoS journals. Results shed light on the most common practices, and while WhatsApp remains the most studied platform, paradoxically, it is still in the experimental stage. While the use of private messaging apps for news reception may be considered a private activity, the findings suggest that this private reception does not necessarily equate to individual or isolated consumption. The results have implications for stages such as news gathering and production, while also revealing subtopics in research on these platforms, such as the need for new digital literacies, trust as a primary casualty of disinformation, and some community practices. This approach underlines the need for trans- national studies to identify common practices in the use of these technologies that are not solely driven by the particular context of a country.