My brother the doctor
sent me this email (link, blogpost, Tweet) about…
The University of Kentucky
or
President Barack Obama has
authorized over $20 million to facilitate emigration from Gaza
or
FEMA is building detention camps
for U.S. political dissidents
…and he has checked
and it is true. Must read!
Have you received one of them or something like it? several
times? Do you know something else? They’re all Internet rumors; they’re not
true and, in some cases, they are years old.
Internet rumors are not just spread by anti-government extremists,
conspiracy theorists or disgruntled members of society (although that is where
they often start), more and more they are being spread by ordinary people.
The most tenacious rumors have a grain of truth, which is
what makes them so attractive and believable.
Rumors matter. In the
1967 riots in Detroit, Watts, Cleveland, Newark, and Harlem, incidental events became
exaggerated to the point of being incendiary in already pressurized
communities.
Although the mechanism of rumors has not changed, today we
are seeing rumors being instigated to further hatred of ethnic, religious and
social groups in both subtle and blatant ways.
The University of Kentucky
This rumor is nearly
identical to an earlier e-mail rumor about schools in the U.K. which
originally circulated in 2007. It appears someone substituted the words
"University of Kentucky " for "U.K. " and re-circulated the
message. Holocaust education is mandatory in Britain .
President Barack Obama has
authorized over $20 million to facilitate emigration from Gaza – False
On January 27, 2009, President
Obama sent a memorandum to the Secretary of State, authorizing the redirecting
of money in the State Department's Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance
(ERMA) Fund – a fund established to deal with unexpected humanitarian issues -
towards Gaza
relief. This Memorandum does not deal
with the status of Palestinian refugees nor "open the floodgates to
Hamas" to enter the United
States .
FEMA is building detention camps
for U.S. political dissidents – False
FEMA does have facilities with
significant stockpiles of equipment and material. It is very likely they have
contingency plans to house large numbers of people displaced by disasters. I
should hope so – that is their job.
An increasingly common tactic of rumor mongers is to claim
that the rumor is true because it is being ignored bias mediaoutlets. Omission
of unsubstantiated facts does not define bias - it defines good
journalism.
What if you get an email, Tweet, Facebook post that you
think may be an Internet rumor?
1 – Stop: never forward emails in the heat of the moment
2 – Confirm: make an effort to confirm the information in the email
by visiting ADL.org, Snopes.com or Google. Try to determine the source of the
information and if the information has been embellished.
3- Consider: Consider the potential damage the rumor could trigger
for a business or society at large. Think about the possible motivation of the
person who initiated the rumor.
4- Don’t Distribute: if you don’t know the sender, if you can’t
confirm the information reliably, if you suspect it has been circulated with
malicious intent.
5- Respond: Let senders know when they are spreading rumors and not
communicating facts. The excuses that “some of it is true”, “I didn’t write it”
or “it sounds like something they would do anyway” is an excuse, not a
justification.
Internet rumors, as with most rumors, are created to get us
to respond in a visceral, emotion way. When friends and families forward us
these emails, post or Tweet, it is
usually out of a genuine desire that we see something they believe to be
important.
Stop-Confirm-Consider-Don’t Distribute-Respond.
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