Snopes.com Fact-checking Article Assignment Sequence


  Date: 2024-07-25
  Author: Nathan Pieplow
  License: CC BY-NC-SA
  Domain: Persuading with Data
  Subdomain: Making Claims with Data
  Type of Resource: Assignment

Snopes.com is a well-known fact-checking website. This assignment sequence, designed for an upper-division writing class, asks students to propose, research, and write their own Snopes.com article using quantitative argumentation to fact-check a claim they have found on the internet. In its current form the sequence is designed to take 1 to 1.5 weeks of class.

Keywords:  Fact-checking    Quantitative Rhetoric    Statistical Claims    Data-driven Argument  

MLA Citation: Pieplow, Nathan. ‘Snopes Fact-checking Article’ (assignment sequence). Data Advocacy 4 All, University of Colorado. 27 July 2024


Introduction for Instructors

This assignment sequence lays out a drafted and workshopped writing assignment designed for an upper-division undergraduate writing course and intended to take 1-1.5 weeks of the course to complete. It asks students to find a claim online that they wish to fact-check in the style of a Snopes.com article. Then it asks them to perform a genre analysis of articles from the site before writing, workshopping, and revising their own article.

The sequence consists of four assignments.. After the third assignment, students get feedback from peers and the instructor via a workshopping process not explained here, before submitting the final draft in the fourth assignment.

Before beginning this sequence, we recommend showing students the slide decks “Getting Started with Data for Advocacy,” “Demonstrating Causation,” “Framing Statistics,” and “Evaluating Statistical Claims.”

The student-facing instructions for all four assignments are as follows:

Assignment 1: Pick a claim for your fact-checking article

Your next writing assignment will be a fact-checking article for the Snopes.com website, and it’s time to propose a claim that you want to check. Your proposal should be:

  • Simple. Don’t pick a gigantic topic like “is the world flat?” or “do vaccines cause autism?” or “is evolution real?” or “Do video games cause violence?” If somebody could write an entire book about your claim, then it’s too big and you need to zoom in farther. Also, don’t propose a claim about the future, because predictions aren’t fact-checkable.
  • Original. Don’t pick a claim that Snopes has already checked. The point is to write new material for their website. Search their site to see if they have already written about your ideas.
  • Hyperlinked. Link to an actual source that is making the claim. It does not have to be a credible source – it could just be one crazy dude on social media – but that crazy dude has to really believe it. That is, you should NOT link to works of satire, and you should NOT link to provocation from trolls who are only saying things to get people riled up.
  • Checkable using data, numbers, or statistics. It doesn’t matter whether you decide the claim is true or false. What matters is that you can use data to help determine how true it is. If the original source uses data or numbers to back up its claim, then you can check where those data or numbers came from and how trustworthy they are. If the original source is analyzing data, you can check their analysis. If the original source does NOT use any data but you can find your own data to judge their claim, that’s great too!

Before you choose, I recommend browsing Snopes’s fact-checking section to see the types of claims they check. For this assignment, you may want to steer more toward the scientific claims than the political claims, but I leave it up to you. Snopes.com gives several ratings besides just “True” and “False,” so make sure to read their list of ratings to see how they deal with partial truths, intermediate cases, etc. Here are a few examples of claims that are the right size and type for this assignment. Each is linked to a source that is making the claim:

I’ll be reviewing your proposals to make sure that it looks like everybody’s on the right track. You can propose a Plan A and a Plan B if you want. If you have questions, email me!

Assignment 2: Genre analysis of Snopes.com fact-checking articles

For next class, we’re going to collaborate on a genre analysis of Snopes.com fact-checking articles. Working together, our goal is to assemble a comprehensive description of the genre that will serve as your assignment instructions when you write your own example.

Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the genre

Read at least 5 Snopes.com fact-checking articles. You might want to search for examples on topics that interest you; to do this, add “site:snopes.com/fact-check” to your Google search on your topic. If you just type into the search box on Snopes.com, you’ll get all sorts of Snopes articles, not just the fact checks.

Step 2: In the Google Doc, contribute one genre convention to the description of the genre

Click on the Google Doc. I have created for this assignment.

Based on your comparison of Snopes.com fact-checking articles, come up with one similarity that you notice between members of the genre. It should be a feature that at least a significant minority of examples share, but it does not have to appear in all or even most of the examples.

Before you add your own convention to the list, read what your classmates have already posted. Make sure nobody else has already posted the same or a very similar convention. (If they have, think of something else.)

Then, add your convention to the list. Of the examples you looked at, explain which ones have it and which ones do not. Summarize, to the best of your ability, the function and form of this convention. Describe how prevalent it is, and why you think particular articles would or would not have it. Try to explain the outliers and the exceptions. If you notice any correlations between this and other genre conventions, mention them (for example: the same examples that lack X also lack Y).

Don’t repeat what other people have done. However, similarities can nest within one another, so you can add one that forms a more detailed bullet point under someone else’s if you like. You can also subsume other people’s similarities underneath your own, if it seems appropriate. The goal is to end up with a logical and complete description of the genre. At the end of whatever you write, add your name in parentheses, like this: (Nathan Pieplow).

If you are having trouble finding a genre convention:

You can describe any similarities you are capable of noticing, but in case you get stuck, here are some questions to think about (this is not a complete list):

  • Rhetorical situation / purpose
    • Who creates in this genre?
    • Who is it intended for? What kinds of audiences would this genre tend to have? In what situations would people come across this genre?
    • What are its purposes? Which purposes are common to all members of this genre?
    • What counts as evidence (personal testimony, anecdotes, emotional appeals, ethos appeals, scientific studies, original data, etc.)?
  • Content / organization
    • What subsections does the text include? For a given subsection type, what content is typically included?
    • Use of subheadings, bulleted lists, columns, table of contents, data tables, sidebars, callouts, title pages, appendices, glossaries, author bio blurbs, and other elements
    • Organization / order of these elements
    • How are these elements are labeled, captioned, titled, and/or referenced in the text?
    • How many words in a typical sentence? How many sentences in a typical paragraph? How many paragraphs in a typical subsection? Etc.
  • Use of visual (not just textual) elements
    • Do the examples include photos, charts/graphs, decorative elements?
    • How they are arranged in relation to the text? How are they referenced by the text or reference it? How central do they seem to the reader/user experience?
    • How does the genre use color, typeface, and graphic design?
  • Tone of writing
    • Use of first person (I / we)
    • Use of specialized terminology
    • How would you describe the writer’s tone?
  • Research
    • Does the text cite other sources? If so, what kinds of sources and why? How are those sources credited (parenthetical citation? works cited section? footnotes? end notes? hyperlinks? Or by mentioning the source in the sentence? Or some combination of these?)
    • If the text mentions sources in the sentences, what kinds of information does it give us about those sources the first time each source is mentioned? What about subsequent mentions?

Assignment 3: Write the First Draft of Your Snopes.com Fact-checking Article

For next class, please write the first draft of your Snopes.com fact-checking article. Follow the guidelines that we developed as a class. They can be found in the Google Docs we created for last class’s homework. Please let me know if you have any questions or run into problems!

Assignment 4: Final Draft of the Snopes.com Fact-checking Article

For next class, submit the final draft of your Snopes.com fact-checking article. When grading, I will look closely at the quality of your writing, the quality of your fact-checking, and how wisely you have chosen from the conventions of the genre as described in our Google Doc. Email me (or drop by office hours) if you have any questions!