Scoping review design and methods

We conducted a scoping review of literature published between 2003 and 2023, with the goal of uncovering and making sense of emergent knowledge and approaches around cultures and communication in digital worlds since our last review. We opted for this approach because it offers a systematic approach to mapping the existing literature on a specific topic, identifying key concepts, gaps, and the breadth of evidence available. This type of review is particularly useful for exploratory research questions, and its iterative nature enabled us to refine our focus as we progressed, making it adaptable to evolving research landscapes (Mak & Thomas, 2022). A scoping review offers a broad overview of the literature, helping to identify gaps and areas for future research (Pollock et al., 2024) rather than attempting to achieve a complete and reproducible method to collect all studies that have explored these issues (Fink, 2019; Okoli, 2015). We quickly realized that it was impossible to capture and properly process such a volume of information, which initially consisted of tens of thousands of results. Instead, we collected and analyzed documents until we reached saturation–we stopped when we found repetition around the same topics, approaches, and contexts. We understand saturation in line with Low (2019), who argues that it is impossible to reach saturation to a level where new information is not emergent–there is always something new and elusive that has failed to be captured. Rather, we see saturation as a cartographic effort, where we seek to map the landscape of cultures and communication in digital worlds while knowing that the map will never fully translate into the complex terrain of studies around culture and communication in digital worlds.