Table 2.

Summary of inclusion criteria for our rapid review.

High-level criteria
Inclusion
We included any empirical research. There were no restrictions on study design except to exclude opinion pieces. Data had to have been collected and analysed.
Only studies in English were considered.
There were no exclusions based on publication year across all the reviews.
We initially aimed to include only studies based in Africa; however, because the evidence base was small, we expanded our search to include all countries.
We had aimed to include studies that focused on misinformation on COVID-19 but because the evidence base was small, we included studies on misinformation on other public health issues.
Although we initially focused on WhatsApp, we included other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
We considered voice, video, image and text formats.
Exclusion
We excluded studies about misinformation on elections and political discourse, except for those that also included content on public health.
We also excluded studies that were on misinformation on YouTube.
Specific to Focus 1 (harm)	Specific to Focus 2 (user behaviour)	Specific to Focus 3 (mitigating strategies)
We included only studies which reported harm caused by misinformation.	We included only studies which detailed recipient responses to receiving misinformation, in terms of sharing, believing and/or acting on information received on social media.	We included only studies which described mitigation strategies that had been implemented and/or studies that evaluated their effectiveness.