Framing Fake News: Misinformation and the ACRL Framework

To address the growing problem of misinformation, librarians often focus on approaches tied to the frame "Authority Is Constructed and Contextual" from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The Framework, however, encompasses a much wider range of skills, abilities, knowledge practices, and dispositions that can be used to recognize and avoid misinformation in today's complex media environment. This article does a close reading of the Framework to examine how librarians can apply it more fully when teaching research strategies, especially source evaluation. The authors propose that librarians take a holistic approach to the misinformation problem and promote critical thinking by incorporating concepts and dispositions from every frame in their instruction.