Watermarking approach for source authentication of web content in online social media: a systematic literature review

Online Social Media (OSM) enables users to create a powerful virtual bond that facilitates global forwarding/sharing of messages, decision-making, analysis, or voting. Along with the ease of internet services, one may easily forward/share web content over OSM such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, to name a few. The practice of forwarding these web contents without verifying the source's authenticity could have serious political, social, or financial consequences for society. Thus, it is significant to know about the epicenter of the misinformation or disinformation spread over social media. In this research article, through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), we analyze various watermarking techniques along with their performance metrics for source authentication of web content in OSM. Based on several inclusion and exclusion criteria, this study critically analyses the findings of 82 selected research papers published between 2016 to 2022. As a result of SLR, we have explored and analyzed a total of 18 various watermarking techniques in spatial and transform domains with their properties and 22 performance metrics. Finally, the research questions are answered, and conclusive trends are reported.