This year’s United States presidential election campaign may be remembered for the proliferation of fake, false and misleading news stories especially on social media sites such as Facebook. Viral news hoaxes have been around for many years but 2016 seems to be the year they exploded into the consciousness of the American public. Even typically reliable news sources, whether mainstream or alternative, corporate or nonprofit, rely on particular media frames to select and report news stories based on different notions of newsworthiness. The best thing to do in our contemporary media environment is to read, watch and listen both widely and often, and to be critical of the news sources we share and engage with on social media. To help you in evaluating news stories, Reynolds Libraries has created a guide – http://libguides.reynolds.edu/fakenews
