Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. Research from Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has found a long and steady decline in trust in traditional media. (See Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020). This declining trust coincides with the uprise of social media as a main source of information. In 2020, social media was a source of news for 48 percent of the public, up from 27 percent in 2013, according to the Reuters Institute.
