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Assignment #4- Field Guide to Research

When I visited Buzzsumo, I was able to create a free account to begin my fact-checking journey. Upon thinking of a topic to choose from, I decided to type in “Subaru” because I love their brand and I personally drive one. One of the first articles that popped up was on the site MarketingDaily titled “'Subaru Loves Pets' Month Returns” written by Tanya Gazdik. The article goes into detail on Subaru’s impact to help dogs that need extra caring for, including older dogs and dogs with special needs. They help to do this by dedicating the month of October to collect donations for this cause and spread the word to help rescue and place these pups in good homes.

 To begin my fact checking process, I decided to head over to subaru.com directly to see if they were promoting “Subaru Loves Pets Month '' on their official site. I was able to type into the search bar “Subaru Loves Pets Month” and the first article that populated proved this cause to be true. On this page there are various links to view videos, partnerships, and ways to become partners with Subaru. This article is near and dear to my heart as my dog is a rescue and essentially rescued us! 

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Assignment #3- Read Laterally

By reading laterally, I began my search for a lesser-known personality who posts on social media regularly, by searching on X (formerly known as Twitter). I came across an account that did not have many followers  that was posting about the topic of ocean pollution. The account handle is @MarmiteForMe with 93 followers, and the account creator's name is JonS, and he quotes “Save our oceans - a little game,big message. Decided to release this unfinished game #MadeInDreams #reduceplastic”. In that post, he provided a video clip of a game that he created for viewers to simulate the effects of ocean pollution. The game is a repeated cycle of trash and debris being picked out of our oceans, but each time a bucket of trash is picked up, within seconds another piece appears. I wanted to verify that Jon S was in fact the creator of this game and a reliable source. In @MarmiteForMe’s bio it is shown that he is a developer, designer, works in IT for a company called Liftshare, and loves to make a positive change in our environment. I clicked on the link of the game Jon S created and the handle for the game account is the same as on X, which is @MarmiteForMe. I then was able to Google search Jon S and Liftshare, and came across the Linkedin page for Jonathan Scutt (Jon S), who is a Senior Web Developer at Liftshare. There are also testimonials on Jon S’s page from colleagues that work and have worked with Jon discussing how it is working with him there. I was able to verify that Jon was the creator of his game “Save our oceans” and everything he has provided regarding details of himself have been proven to be trustworthy.

https://x.com/MarmiteForMe/status/1231315326572408835?s=20

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Assignment #2- Go Upstream

As a lot of us may remember this viral photo from years ago where we can see a young girl appearing to be smirking in front of what looks to be a house fire. I have seen this photo many different times, but never knew where it originated from or if it was real or not. I decided to head over to Google and search “young girl smirking in front of a burning building”. In my search results, I quickly discovered that the internet gave this young girl the nickname of “disaster girl”. I then decided to do a separate search with the phrase “disaster girl”. When my search results loaded, the first result was from Wikipedia.com, which I skipped over in hopes to find a more trustworthy source capable of a better fact checking process. I then scrolled down to nytimes.com and found an article that gave more backstory on this viral image. The headline discusses not only her nickname, but also how much money she has made as a result of this “meme”. We are able to see that the girl in this photo is Zoe Roth who was 4 years old at the time of this photo taken in 2005 by her Father who was a photographer. Her Father later entered this photo he captured into a photo contest in 2007 and won. We can determine that this photo is real, however the fire was a controlled fire and the local children were even given permission by the Firefighters to help extinguish the fire alongside them by holding the fire hose. In furthering my research, I came across a video interview of Zoe Roth herself, explaining all of these details directly with the image included as part of the video. 

I Accidentally Became A Meme: Disaster Girl

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Assignment #1- Fact Checking

One night after I got home from work, I was on my Instagram feed scrolling when I came across a story posted by the account “Pubity”. This story was in regards to two teens going to prom together 17 years after being in the NICU during the same time as little ones. I began to question a few things about the post including, “how can we be sure they were in the NICU at the same time together?”, or “how can I be 100% certain that both families are not fabricating any parts of this story?” In the caption posted by “Pubity”, it is reflected that in Nashville in 2005, both teens were in the NICU and were reunited 17 years later to go to prom after their families kept in close contact. 

My first instinct was to jump to a conclusion that this post may be real out of habit of being pretty trusting to the things I see on social media. Although this post could very well be true, it could have also been very well made up, or the photo of the couple going to prom could have been a couple who never experienced being in the NICU together as little ones. Another note to add is in the post by “Pubity” the teens names are not provided.

I then began my fact checking process by going DuckDuckGo and searching “Nicu couple goes to prom” and instantly the results provided links to other news sources including the nypost.com, abcnews.go.com, and foxnews.com discussing the pair. At the tops of the searches, there were also links to videos of the teens themselves being interviewed about their story. In the FoxNews interview, both the teens and their moms are asked questions about their lives. The teens stated their names are Tatum Kelly and Leighton Long, both 17 years of age. Their moms also shared photos from their times together as infants, to toddlers, and then to teens. The viral photo is also displayed in the interview and I concluded upon my searches that the viral photo is in fact real and matched the photo and description from the “Pubity” post I originally saw on Instagram.