Why Folklore Scholarship Matters in the (Mis)Information Age.

Melanie Kimball
Dec 5
4 min read

Article researched and written by Melanie Kimball, WSFS Student-at-Large (2025)

Close-up image of people using their phones. — Image credit: Camilo Jimenez on *Unsplash*, 7 November 2019.

The 2024 US presidential election was rife with finger-pointing and vitriol. The Democrats accused Donald Trump of staging an assassination attempt to garner public sympathy; Trump accused Haitian immigrants—allowed into the US by Democrat immigration policies—of eating their neighbors’ pets. Polarized legends and rumors spread at a record pace across the country. Legends have always traveled fast, but digital platforms have turned circulation into a near-instant process. In an era shaped by political polarization, algorithmic news feeds, and viral misinformation, folklore studies offers tools that are more relevant than ever.

Political rumors and conspiracy theories aren’t new. Concerns of a group eating taboo meat, sacrificing children, or attempting to murder their opponents have existed for centuries. Beyond elections, contemporary legends about crime and morality have and continue to shape public policy debates. Oral and print media used to be the primary means of circulation, but the internet has intensified the transmission process. Narratives transform at the touch of a share button, with the potential to mutate and spread millions of times a day.

While those without a folklore background may have panicked over daily accusations, any student of contemporary legends could identify patterns in the 2024 US election narratives. Folklore studies helps people understand misinformation, in part because it trains individuals to approach narratives not as verifiable accounts but as living, functioning tools. Folklorists don’t study whether a rumor is “true.” They study why people tell it, why others believe it, how it spreads, and what anxieties it expresses. Folklorists understand that legends thrive during times of uncertainty, rumors express community fears that are difficult to talk about directly, narrative structures repeat and adapt to new contexts, and belief is social—people believe stories that reinforce group identity. Folklorists know why some political narratives go viral when other—perhaps more accurate or important—stories disappear.

Folklorists have spent years honing this unique insight into political misinformation, but the ability to parse information is a skill everyone can and should learn. Folklorists could argue that folklore studies should become a requirement of civic education. Fact-checking is important but can be time-consuming. People can more readily identify information as a rumor or legend through contextual and genre analysis. Readers should approach with caution any information that:

is attributed to an unnamed “inside source,”
includes warnings that are framed as protective,
displaces anxieties onto powerful, hidden, or marginalized entities,
uses phrases such as “just sharing” or “I heard this from someone who knows,
centers on rumors of contamination (such as of consumer goods), children in danger, or government cover-ups,
or asks the audience to use “common sense” to fill in the gaps.

Folklorist Jeannie Banks Thomas’s S.L.A.P. test is another quick and accessible method for identifying misinformation. She states that any story that elicits shock or fear, requires questionable logistics, involves A-list events or people, or prejudices the reader against a certain group is likely an unfounded rumor.

A cartoon Bigfoot slaps an inquiring legend-seeker on their phone while saying "SLAP the stories not your friends and family!" Image is labeled S.L.A.P. Testing Unverified Accounts with text on conspiracy detection over a green-yellow background. Text on image is included in the body of this blog post. — Image developed and credited to Utah State University College of Humanities & Social Sciences, & Jeannie Banks Thomas.

The SLAP Test consists of four simple questions:

1. Does the account attempt to scare or shock? If the answer is yes, be wary. 2. Does the account rely on complicated or far-fetched logistics? If the answer is yes, be wary. 3. Does the account involve A-listers—famous people, products, or events? If the answer is yes, be wary. 4. Does the account demonstrate prejudice; that is, does it demonize or portray a person or group as “other”? If the answer is yes, be wary.

Traditionally, folklorists avoided intervening in communities’ belief systems. One tenet of folklore studies is avoiding judging others’ beliefs; folklorists approach individuals on the individual’s terms, without criticism. However, widespread misinformation introduces ethical stakes that can’t be ignored. During COVID-19 and subsequent election cycles, some folklorists began publishing public-facing analyses of rumors, partnering with educators and journalists to counter misinformation, and annotating conspiracy narratives to show historical parallels and narrative patterns. This shift doesn’t mean folklorists are telling people what to believe. They’re also not criticizing or disrespecting those who believe and proliferate misinformation—rumors and conspiracy theories are ways to communicate fears and should always be treated gently. Instead, folklorists are showing people how narratives work. Their goal is to empower people to understand the narratives that shape their political world and think critically about how those narratives influence their public behavior.

A greater public understanding of folklore could decrease the spread of misinformation and generate awareness of how the narratives one engages with shape their attitudes, beliefs, relationships, and behaviors. Folklore studies could train people to question what fears are driving a rumor, what makes a legend meaningful to the teller, what social conditions allow a narrative to spread, and what variants of a story are emerging, changing, or disappearing. These questions can help address misinformation not by fact-checking alone but by understanding belief as a cultural and emotional experience.

Folklore, in other words, is civic literacy.

Author Bio:

Melanie Kimball is a current PhD student in Indiana University’s folklore program. She holds an MA in folklore studies from Utah State University and a BA in English from Brigham Young University. Her interests include archives and public programming, ethnomusicology, supernatural legends, and Latter-day Saint folklife.