Archbishop Desmond Tutu is dead. A racist cop killed a Black kid in Alabama after mistaking his saxophone for a gun. Donald Trump said he’s going to be “more popular than fried chicken and watermelon” in the Black community.
At a time when misleading memes and goofy GIFs regularly make it seem like people said things they never said or did things they never did, scholars say Snopes.com is playing an evermore important role in setting the record straight and bringing some much-needed sanity to social media, particularly given the heated rhetoric and faulty claims of the 2016 election and continuing public protests over the police shootings of African-Americans.
“With all the data and statements flying around in the wake of police shootings of Black people and assertions by political candidates and their surrogates, fact-checking is especially crucial for those wishing to be fully informed,” said Jackie Jones, an associate professor and chair of the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University.
Jones says she uses Snopes “fairly frequently” and laments that people tend to trust stories they see on the internet “too easily” and assume that the stories have been vetted.
“As a journalist I check before reposting and check more than one source,” Jones said. “But I often use Snopes as a starting point in my own research. I encourage my civilian friends to do the same before forwarding items to me.”
Dr. Patricia A. Turner, dean and vice provost of the Division of Undergraduate Education at UCLA and an expert on racial dynamics in folklore and popular culture, said the Snopes website has become so popular that it has become a verb.
