Tag Archives: genealogy research

Has Twitter Declared You Dead?

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Has Twitter declared you dead?

I’ve several ancestors with stories that reports of their death was not just greatly exaggerated but definitely premature. Have you?

The above linked article from 2019 on Lexology warned of death hoaxes on social media. Just are rumors start in the real world and quickly get out of control, rumors on social media move even faster. There have been many celebrities and politicians reported dead long before their death dates.

This idea interests me from a genealogical perspective in a couple ways.

First, this isn’t new. So why should we be so surprised to find out that it is not just true in social media today, but true in the past.

When was the last time you doubted an obituary, newspaper article, or letter reporting the death of an ancestor and took it as truth? Seriously.

I have and found out that they hadn’t died, though most died a few days later according to the death records.

Still, after a couple experiences, I learned not to trust the newspapers and non-official resources until I could corroborate the facts with official, verified sources.

Second, what does it say about us as a society that we would hook into such misinformation and run with it?

Just as we shouldn’t trust information from the past to be the absolute truth as we rummage through records covering the life of our ancestors and reveal the stories they told, the little white lies and the big red ones, we shouldn’t trust the information coming to us through social media, newspapers, and other sources, including our government, especially if their…shall I say “reliability” and “motives” are suspect to begin with?

The concept of Yellow Journalism focused on sensationalism and exaggeration to sell papers. The famous sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor from a mysterious explosion became fodder for Hearst in 1898 to declare this was an enemy attack, allowing Hearst to sell more newspapers that pushed public opinion to believe the US was justified in starting the Spanish-American War. It worked, helping to make Hearst very rich as he continued to twist innocent events into sinister plots.

War propaganda fills history with lies and exaggerations that didn’t stop at newspapers but reveled in the world of cinema and political theater. The Red Scare promoted by Senator Joseph McCarthy with a passion for anti-Communist hysteria and intrigue, pitting friends, families, and co-workers against each other with suspicion. The Vietnam War. Nixon and the Watergate Scandal. Clinton and the intern. Brexit. Pizzagate. And today. Well, every day seems to be a new conspiracy theory that is dividing up the United States and leaking into other countries, sowing seeds of doubt and mistrust everywhere. Just last week, Trump made at least 50 false claims, lies, about the whistleblower reporting on his phone call with the president of Ukraine asking him to rewrite history and find evidence of on Hunter Biden to damage his father running for US president. According to the article, his 50 false claims were “the fourth-lowest total for the 17 weeks” CNN fact-checked, like that is a badge of honor.

This isn’t about politics, but about understanding the nature of humans to embrace falsehoods due to their sensationalism or because they sound better than the truth. As we dig through history, we encounter many ancestors who lied or exaggerated their wealth and status, marriage(s), children, occupations, etc. Our family trees are filled with lies about dates of birth and ages to allow many to marry, join the military, or gain something by being older or younger than they really were. We need to embrace those lies and work to prove them wrong, or admit that we might never know the reasons behind them, and recognize them as questionable evidence and proof.

We need to teach ourselves, our families, friends, and others to be discerning when it comes to misinformation and outrageous stories. It’s not just about someone falsely being reported as dead. We need to develop a habit of checking the facts.

Luckily, today we have the tools to test the information before we share it. Read reputable news sources. Stay away from news sources that exaggerate or take sides. Use these sites to verify the facts before you share tweets, emails, etc. with others. Some of these sites also check historical data.

Also check out Wikipedia’s listing of fact-checking websites covering global sites.

As you write/rewrite your own history, think twice about whatever misinformation you might be slipping into your own history or family tree.

Here are some other articles that might be of interest on this subject.

Google Alerts for Family History Research

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Google Alerts - Front Page Set up for Lorelle - Lorelle in the Past Lane.Google Alerts have been around since 2003 and serve as an excellent free method to uncover topics of interest on the web. Google Alerts are an ideal way of bringing the information on your family history research to you rather than you chasing after it.

Google Alerts are not searches as much as they are notices that there is a news item, blog post, or scientific research on your topic of interest. I’ve been using them since the beginning to track surnames in my family tree and topics related to family history, genealogy, genealogy technology, and other areas of interest.

Google Alerts is designed to email you automatically with a link list when news is found, daily, or in a weekly digest. It also includes the ability to create a feed of the alert results which you may add to your feed reader for easy updates.

To use Google Alerts, consider what you wish to track. Alerts for the family name “Anderson” will generate every news article about a criminal or sports player with the last name Anderson, every mention of towns and streets with Anderson in the name such as Andersonville – very overwhelming.

Google Alerts uses basic Boolean for search terms. “Anderson Wisconsin” will restrict the alerts to news items with both Anderson and Wisconsin in them, but might miss those with abbreviations for Wisconsin such as Wisc. and WI. The more specific you are, the more restrictive the search, and the more you may find or miss, and the less specific you are, the more likely you are to be inundated. Be patient and willing to experiment to find the right combination that works for your needs.

Using quote marks and plus and minus signs, you improve the results.

  • Andreas Anderson Wisconsin = mentions of all three words in the text.
  • “Andreas Anderson” +Wisconsin = mentions of Andreas Anderson near the word Wisconsin.
  • “Andreas Anderson” -Wisconsin = mentions of Andreas Anderson with no mention of Wisconsin.
  • “Andreas Anderson” -Wisconsin -Michigan -Florida = mentions of Andreas Anderson with no mention of Wisconsin, Michigan, or Florida.
  • “Andreas Anderson” +Wisconsin -Michigan -Florida = mentions of Andreas Anderson and Wisconsin with no mention of Michigan or Florida.
  • site:cnn.com +Anderson +Wisconsin +baseball = mentions of Anderson, Wisconsin, and baseball on the CNN news site.
  • intitle:genealogy = mentions of “genealogy” only in the title of posts, irregardless of the use of the world within the content.
  • “family history” intitle:genealogy = mentions of “genealogy” only in the title of posts with “family history” in the content.
  • #genealogytips = mentions of the hashtag.
  • genealogy OR “family history” = mentions of either term.
  • genealogy OR “family history” +society -Wisconsin = mentions of either term with the word “society” but not “Wisconsin.”
  • Anderson type:image = mentions of “Anderson” associated with an image.

I work hard to find interesting archives, especially digital archives, for this site and my students and workshop participants, breaking the doors open on what’s available to help you learn more about your ancestors. Unfortunately, my Google Alert for “archives” is indeed overwhelming. Over the years I’ve honed it down. The current version is:

archives -“from the archives” -sport -football -baseball -teams -taxpayer -marvel -endometrial – endocrine -ovarian -“breast cancer” -“the bachelorette” -fortnite -overwatch -“grand theft auto” -“varicose veins” -football -soccer -hockey -cholesterol -“free concert” -“cancer claim”

Why? Because there are too many “from the archives” posts that have nothing to do with a physical or historical archive, too many mentions of sports archives, and other unrelated odds and ends that appear in my Google Alerts feed for “archives.” By eliminating as many of the distraction posts, I see more of what I want to see and report to my readers.

For more information on Google’s use of Boolean search operators, see Google’s Boolean Search Operators Guide.

How to Setup a Google Alert

Once you have an idea of how specific your Google Alert search term is, it’s time to set up your Google Alerts. It’s free, and you may have as many a you need.

  1. Sign into your Google Account and go to Google Alerts.
  2. Type in the search terms in the form for “Create an alert about…”
    Google Alerts - Search Results to Create an Alert for Genealogy Society - Lorelle in the Past Lane.
  3. The resulting page displays a sample of the results. If there are too few results, or the results don’t match your expectations, change the wording in your alert search term. If there are too many results, consider removing some using the minus in front of keywords.
  4. To create a Google Alert, click the Show Options link.Google Alerts - Alert customization options - Lorelle in the Past Lane.
    • Set how often you wish to recieve an email or have the feed updated.
    • If you wish to restrict your searches to a specific type of media such as the news, blogs only, video, images, books, etc., do so in the Sources section.
    • If you are seeking language specific content, switch to that language.
    • If you would like to restrict the information found to a specific geographical region, you can select that option to reduce the incoming results.
    • The How many option is confusing. They options are “Only the best results” or “All results.” The latter gives you everything found. If you are working with a fairly specific and restrictive set of terms, this might be your best option. Otherwise, consider selecting the best results as Google Alerts may analyze the relevance of the content to match your search terms, thus improving the results.
    • Deliver to sets the Google alert process for delivery of the information via email or feed. If you would like both, you will need to create two alerts with the same terms, but different options for delivery.
  5. When ready, click Create Alert.
    • If the alert will be delivered to your email, it may arrive shortly or within 24 hours, as news is available. Check your spam filters to ensure you whitelist these emails, or set up a filter to send them to a specific folder.
    • If the alert will be delivered via RSS feed, copy the link from the feed logo (curved fan) and add it to your feed reader.
      Google Alerts - My Alerts - Feed links - Edit - Trash buttons - Lorelle in the Past Lane
  6. If you wish to customize your Google Alert results, click the pencil to edit.

Not all of the results will be of interest to you. Review the titles and the excerpts to see if they apply to your research, and if they do, click the link to open the web page. If they don’t apply to you, simply delete the email.

Below is a comparison of the Google Alert created for “genealogy society.” On the left is what it looks like in Google Alerts as a preview of your search request. On the right is what the results look like in my Inoreader feed reader on the desktop.

For more information and tips on using Google Alerts: