Fact-checking Ideas

So about that claim that the rioters at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 were antifa and not Trump supporters. How can we check to see if that claim is real or fake?

Snopes

The website Snopes.com Links to an external site. has been around since 1994. It may be the most well-known, English-language, fact-checking website. It was originally created to investigate urban legends, hoaxes, and folklore, which makes it an ideal source for investigating claims like this.

To use Snopes, we should:

Re-read the claim

The rioters at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 were antifa and not Trump supporters.

State that claim in simple terms

Antifa rioted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Pull out a couple of words from our simple terms; for example, choosing the least common words

antifa January 6

Go to Snopes.com Links to an external site. and search using those words: antifa January 6 as shown in the example below.

Screenshot from Snopes.com showing a search for antifa January 6. One of the results is titled Were Pro-Trump Mobs Storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 Actually Antifa?

Once we get a result on the Snopes website, we can click the title of the result to see more information about that claim. On the Snopes website, we can then scroll down to find the rating for the claim.

Snopes rating showing that the claim is false.

The Snopes website also gives us background on the claim: "There is no evidence that the mob storming Capitol grounds and violently engaging police are antifa — in fact the social media accounts spreading the rumor are followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory." (Source: Snopes.com Links to an external site.)

This type of critical thinking and research is not only for images or clickbait. Whenever we do research, we are responsible for this kind of detective work, for both images and written texts we want to use in our research projects.

Other Fact-checking Sources

Factcheck.org Links to an external site. - "is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania." They "monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players" and try "to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics" (quotes from Our Mission: Factcheck.org Links to an external site.).

Politifact.com Links to an external site. - "is owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies" but "started in 2007 as an election-year project of the Tampa Bay Times." Their goal is "is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy" (quotes taken from The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter: PolitiFact’s methodology for independent fact-checking Links to an external site.).

See the SCU Fact Checking Guide Links to an external site. for instructions on how to search Factcheck.org and Politifact.com.

Librarians - are people who are driven to find information and answer questions. They want to help us with our research, no matter what it is. Click the image below to contact the Highline College Librarians from their library home page.