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Snopes.com Vorlage:IPAc-en, formally known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is one of the first fake online fact-checking websites.[1] It has been termed a "well-regarded source for sorting out myths and rumors" on the internet.[2][3] It has also been seen as a source for validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.[4]

History

In 1994,[5] David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become Snopes.com. Snopes was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, that mainly presented search results of user discussions. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to the Mikkelsons, Snopes antedated the search engine concept where people could go to check facts by searches.[6] David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of William Faulkner)[7][8] as a username in the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban.[9][10][8][10]

In 2002, the site had become well known enough that a television pilot called Snopes: Urban Legends was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host. However, it did not air on major networks.[8] Christopher Richmond and Drew Schoentrup later became owners with Mikkelson through a partnership with the founders of a company called Proper Media.[11] By mid-2014, Barbara had not written for the site "in several years"[12] and David hired employees to assist him from Snopes.com's message board. The Mikkelsons divorced around that time, and Barbara no longer has an ownership stake in Snopes.com.[12][13]

On March 9, 2017, David Mikkelson terminated a brokering agreement with Proper Media, the company that provides Snopes with web development, hosting, and advertising support.[14] This prompted Proper Media to stop remitting advertising revenue and to file a lawsuit in May. In late June, Bardav—the company founded by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 2003 to own and operate snopes.com—started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to continue operations.[15] They raised $500,000 in 24 hours.[16] Later, in August, a judge ordered Proper Media to disburse advertising revenues to Bardav while the case was pending.[17]

Main site

Snopes aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site has been referenced by news media and other sites, including CNN,[18] MSNBC,[19] Fortune, Forbes, and The New York Times.[20] By March 2009, the site had more than 6 million visitors per month.[21] Mikkelson runs the website out of his home in Tacoma, Washington.[22]

Mikkelson has stressed the reference portion of the name Urban Legends Reference Pages, indicating that their intention is not merely to dismiss or confirm misconceptions and rumors but to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmation as well.[23] Where appropriate, pages are generally marked "undetermined" or "unverifiable" when there is not enough evidence to either support or disprove a given claim.[24]

Lost legends

In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on the internet as authority, Snopes assembled a series of fabricated urban folklore tales that it terms "The Repository of Lost Legends".[25] The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L., a reference to the early 1990s definition of the word troll, meaning an Internet prank, of which David Mikkelson was a prominent practitioner.[9]

Accuracy

Jan Harold Brunvand, a folklorist who has written a number of books on urban legends and modern folklore, considered the site so comprehensive in 2004 that he decided not to launch one of his own to similarly discuss the accuracy or various legends and rumors.[10]

In 2012, FactCheck.org reviewed a sample of Snopes' responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases.[26][27] In 2012, The Florida Times-Union reported that About.com's urban legends researcher found a "consistent effort to provide even-handed analyses" and that Snopes' cited sources and numerous reputable analyses of its content confirm its accuracy.[28] Mikkelson has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias, but added that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends.[26]

Funding

Critics of the site have falsely asserted that it is funded by businessman and philanthropist George Soros, or linked sites.[29] Snopes declared in 2016 that its revenue was derived from advertising. In 2016, it also received an award of $75,000 from the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization formed to debunk paranormal claims. In 2017, it raised approximately $700,000 from a crowd-sourced GoFundMe effort and received $100,000 from Facebook as a part of a fact-checking partnership.[30]

Traffic and users

As of December 2017, Snopes.com's web traffic rank in the world stood at 3,798 with approximately 72% originating from the U.S. with web traffic declining from previous months.[31] Vorlage:As of, Snopes.com's Alexa rating was 1,794. Approximately 80% of its visitors originate from within the United States. In 2017, the site attracted 20 million unique visitors in one month.[32][33]

See also

Portal: Internet – Übersicht zu Wikipedia-Inhalten zum Thema Internet

References

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  1. ↑ Snopes.com: Debunking Myths in Cyberspace], NPR, August 27, 2005 
  2. ↑ Melissa Allison, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, “Companies Find Rumors Hard to Kill on Internet,” ‘’Herald and Review,’’ Decatur, Illinois, March 4, 2007, image 3
  3. ↑ Same article: "Corporations Combat Insistent Urban Legends on Internet," The Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, March 4, 2007, image 7
  4. ↑ Neil Henry: American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media. University of California Press, 2007: "The most widely known resource for validating or debunking rumors, myths, hoaxes, and urban legends in popular American culture is the website run by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson at www.snopes.com..."
  5. ↑ Triangulation 343 David Mikkelson, Snopes.com | TWiT.TV. In: TWiT.tv. Abgerufen am 25. April 2018 (amerikanisches Englisch).
  6. ↑ Brian Stelter: Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net In: The New York Times, April 4, 2010. Abgerufen im April 5, 2010 
  7. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions. Snopes.com, abgerufen am 9. Juni 2006: „What are 'snopes'?“
  8. ↑ a b c Paul Bond: Web site separates fact from urban legend In: San Francisco Chronicle, September 7, 2002. Abgerufen im July 17, 2012 
  9. ↑ a b David Porter: Internet Culture. Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-1-135-20904-9, Usenet Communities and the Cultural Politics of Information, S. 48 (google.com [abgerufen am 13. September 2016]): „The two most notorious trollers in AFU, Ted Frank and snopes, are also two of the most consistent posters of serious research.“
  10. ↑ a b c Cathy Seipp: Where Urban Legends Fall (Memento des Originals vom August 12, 2004 im Internet Archive) In: National Review, July 21, 2004. Abgerufen im February 7, 2014 
  11. ↑ Bianca Bruno: Fact-Checker Snopes’ Owners Accused of Corporate Subterfuge, CNS, 10 May 2017 
  12. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen webby.
  13. ↑ Alexis C. Madrigal: Snopes Faces an Ugly Legal Battle In: The Atlantic, 24 July 2017 
  14. ↑ Paul Farhi: Is Snopes.com, the original Internet fact-checker, going out of business? In: The Washington Post, July 24, 2017 
  15. ↑ Daniel Victor: Snopes, in Heated Legal Battle, Asks Readers for Money to Survive In: The New York Times, July 24, 2017 
  16. ↑ Snopes Meets $500K Crowdfunding Goal Amid Legal Battle. Bloomberg, 25. Juli 2017, abgerufen am 18. Dezember 2017.
  17. ↑ Michelle Dean: Snopes and the Search for Facts in a Post-Fact World, 20. September 2017 
  18. ↑ Beth Nissen: Hear the rumor? Nostradamus and other tall tales, CNN, October 3, 2001. Abgerufen im June 7, 2009 
  19. ↑ Urban Legends Banned-April Fools'!, MSNBC, April 1, 2007. Abgerufen im June 7, 2009 
  20. ↑ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Who Is Barack Obama? Snopes, 24. August 2008, abgerufen am 22. Januar 2008.
  21. ↑ David Hochman: Rumor Detectives: True Story or Online Hoax? Reader's Digest, März 2009, archiviert vom Original am 18. März 2009; abgerufen am 29. März 2016.
  22. ↑ Erik Lacitis: Lies, lies and more lies. Out of an old Tacoma house, fact-checking site Snopes uncovers them In: The Seattle Times, October 10, 2018. Abgerufen im November 6, 2018 
  23. ↑ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Frequently Asked Questions. Snopes, abgerufen am 9. Juni 2006: „How do I know the information you've presented is accurate?“
  24. ↑ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Round Rock Gangs. Snopes, 21. Juli 2011, abgerufen am 3. Mai 2009.
  25. ↑ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Lost Legends. Snopes, abgerufen am 9. Juni 2006.
  26. ↑ a b Ask FactCheck: Snopes.com. FactCheck.org, 10. April 2009, abgerufen am 4. November 2011.
  27. ↑ Fact-checking the fact-checkers: Snopes.com gets an 'A'. Network World, 13. April 2009;.
  28. ↑ Carole Fader: Fact Check: So who's checking the fact-finders? We are In: The Florida Times-Union, September 28, 2012. Abgerufen im July 20, 2016 
  29. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen NYT.
  30. ↑ Disclosures. In: Snopes.com. Abgerufen am 24. August 2018.
  31. ↑ snopes.com Traffic Statistics. In: SimilarWeb. Abgerufen am 29. Januar 2018 (englisch).
  32. ↑ Brian Stelter: Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net In: The New York Times, April 4, 2010. Abgerufen im March 19, 2013 
  33. ↑ Snopes.com Audience Insights - Quantcast. In: www.quantcast.com.
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