Abstract
This chapter provides a new, broader understanding of the political fact-checking that has been so prominent in the United States since the 2016 presidential election but which is also becoming a major trend in many other countries. The major story line in this chapter is the emergence of snopes, one of the leading political fact-checking organizations today, out of the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban (AFU), when two of AFU’s most active members, David and Barbara (Hamel) Mikkelson, pulled their material from AFU to create snopes, taking advantage of the newly created public Internet. The chapter describes the creation and the culture of AFU, the concept of urban legends and the style, purpose, and methods used by AFU members to evaluate urban legends. The chapter then traces the history of snopes as it evolves from the study of urban legends to political fact-checking. The growth in popularity of snopes, the methods and practices it follows, and some criticism of these methods by information scholar Kalev Leetaru are considered. The chapter closes with the crisis for snopes that occurs when the two founders divorce and the organization is beset by legal challenges from its marketing and technology support organization.
No single truth purveyor, no matter how reliable, should be considered an infallible font of accurate information. Folks make mistakes. Or they get duped. Or they have a bad day at the fact-checking bureau. Or some days they’re just being silly. To not allow for any of this is to risk stepping into a pothole the size of Lake Superior.
-David and Barbara Mikkelson (“False Authority” (2001) as quoted in Dean 2017).
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed ethnographic study of a Usenet newsgroup – one concerning soap operas – see Baym (1999).
- 2.
As quoted in North (1994).
- 3.
- 4.
Also see Hauben (1997).
- 5.
Tomblin (2018) (August 2). Oral history interview conducted by Alexis de Coning for this book.
- 6.
Some of the members of AFU included Michele Tepper , an interaction designer who wrote the first article on trolling ; media scholar Clay Shirky; blogger Amanda Marcotte; the principals from snopes, Barbara and David Mikkelson ; and Joel Furr, who had been one of the leaders of the alt hierarchy on Usenet .
- 7.
One of the Old Hats , Paul Tomblin , recalls: “I don’t remember a lot of heated politics going on on AFU, although I’m pretty sure it probably did happen, because I know there were a couple of severely right-wing people who basically quit the group after we kept debunking their facts.” (Tomblin 2018)
- 8.
Brunvand (2001) discusses both his training and how his research methods differ from those of Dorson .
- 9.
alt.folklore.urban Frequently Asked Questions, Part 1.
- 10.
The Old Hats were originally self-declared and later a more formal process of selection was used. Most of the Old Hats tended to be AFU members who had been active from the founding days. As one of them, Paul Tomblin explains: “AFU has this group we called the Old Hats, and it kind of stagnated for a while. They weren’t adding new people, and so another group of people who were active in AFU who weren’t becoming Old Hats formed a group they called the Young Hats. That was perfectly fine with the Old Hats, really, except there was some acrimony at one point where a couple of Young Hats became Old Hats, and we thought that when we made them Old Hats, they should resign from Young Hats. You know, we saw it as a graduation, and they didn’t. So, it’s like, ‘But you’re telling them all the stuff we’re talking about in private.’” (Tomblin 2018).
- 11.
Donovan (2004). Many of the newbies were driven away from AFU by the trolling of the established members. However, some who made many newbie mistakes stuck it out and learned the norms and how to be a successful member of AFU. One such person was Amanda Marcotte, who wrote under the name Mandy the Mighty Mouse: “she broke just about every rule set out in the FAQ in her first month. We gave her a really hard time, and she turned around and she became a really useful and interesting contributor ” (Tomblin 2018). Today, Marcotte is a well-known political blogger.
- 12.
Ray Depew, as quoted in Tepper (1997).
- 13.
Church . Bob 2018 (August 15). Oral history interview conducted by Alexis de Coning for this book.
- 14.
Bruckman (1994). AFU needed a place to store its material. A group of the members pitched in and they purchased a 2 GB hard drive – very large for that time – and installed it at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. (Church 2018)
- 15.
- 16.
Not all of the active members of AFU were comfortable with trolling . As Paul Tomblin , a member of the Old Hats , stated: “Some guys like Ted Frank and Joel Furr just trolled the hell out of newbies , and I thought this was a bad thing, that it scared away new, interested people.” (Tomblin 2018).
- 17.
Michele Tepper also pointed to the fact that there were beginning to be alternative venues for myth busting as the 1990s went on, so some people began to drift away from AFU. Tepper (2018) (August 10). Oral history interview conducted by Alexis de Coning for this book.
- 18.
For example, in 1997 the FAQ included the following annotated bibliographic references: Adams (1984, 1988, 1994); Bronner (1990); Brunvand (1981, 1984, 1986, 1993); Dundas (1987); Dundas and Pagter (1975); Goldstuck (1994); Klintberg (1990); Kohn (1990); Krassner (1984); Opie and Opie (1972); Poundstone (1983); Sheidlower (1995); Smith (1984); Smith and Bennett (1987, 1988); Tindall and Watson (1991, 1994); Turner (1993); Van der Linden (1989, 1991).
- 19.
See alt.folklore.urban Frequently Asked Questions [Part 5 of 5], archived 7 February 1997, http://faqs.cs.uu.nl/na-dir/folklore-faq/part5.html (accessed 31 May 2017).
- 20.
On this point of not being experts, Paul Tomblin noted: “I didn’t have any particular credentials for most of the things I’d posted on AFU, except that I’ve got an engineering mindset, and I do a lot of reading of things. So, I would say something about, I don’t know, something to do with biology, but if Diane Kelly or Ian York were to disagree with me, I certainly wouldn’t argue with them, because I knew that they would have the sites to the actual journal articles that I never read. I just read the popular summaries, or whatever had shown up in the popular press. It was really great. At one point we talked about how the Old Hats should get together and create a consulting company because we have so many diverse areas of expertise.
There was one guy, Bill Nelson, who knew everything there was to know about pyrotechnics and explosives. Another guy … Well, Ian York knew everything you could think of about prion disease and viruses and that sort of thing. I mean, that was his area of research. Diane Kelly, well, actually her main field of research was on animal penises, which came up more often than you would think, mostly because we were trying to get Diane to say things about them. There were guys like Angus Johnson, who had done a lot of research about union movements in the 1930s and ‘40s, and that sort of social science, social and political stuff. He was a great resource on that sort of thing, ‘cause like I said, a lot of us were engineers. We didn’t know, I didn’t know anything about political stuff in the 1930s back then. (Tomblin 2018)
- 21.
Chan, as quoted in Bruckman (1994).
- 22.
Burger (2002), including Burger’s quotation of Degh (2001).
- 23.
snopes.com, Frequently Asked Questions .
- 24.
As quoted in Pogue, David (2010).
- 25.
- 26.
By this time, David was already dating Elyssa Young, whom he later married. The tabloids had a field day with this story because Young had a background as a sex worker. She works at snopes as an administrative assistant. (Dean 2017)
- 27.
Jan Harold Brunvand as cited in Hochman (2009).
- 28.
Alexa, statistics from 28 May 2018. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/snopes.com
- 29.
For an example of a site claiming snopes has political bias, see goodnature (2016). There are many more!
- 30.
See DeGroot (2011).
- 31.
snopes.com, Frequently Asked Questions .
- 32.
See Dean (2017).
- 33.
https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes, accessed 27 July 2017.
- 34.
By her count, at the time of her separation from snopes, she had written 1905 articles for the website. Dean (2017) notes that David was increasingly changing the website, writing Barbara out of the history of snopes.
- 35.
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Aspray, W., Cortada, J.W. (2019). From Debunking Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking. In: From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22952-8_2
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