Helpful Links

Lifeline If you or your family is struggling to make ends meet, there are many programs and resources available to you. Lifeline connects people with those needed resources, and we’re here to help. From transportation, food assistance, utility assistance, housing, health care and so much more, we can help you find the resources you need.

United Way 2-1-1 Help Center provides free and confidential 24-hour access to a compassionate professional who will review your options for help, develop a plan and act as your advocate if you are faced with barriers to service. Simply dial 2-1-1 or click the link to chat with a professional for assistance.

Crisis help Lines

Elder fraud/ justice resources for Ohio

Resources for fact checking

FactCheck.org, from The Annenburg Public Policy Center, fact-checks current news in an article. Articles link to primary source documents. Users can search by topic, issues, or people.

Snopes.com is run by a private company and has advertisements on its site. While there are political stories on the website, the source is best used for looking into stories that tend to go viral on social media.

PolitiFact.com, run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, fact-checks statements from public figures and journalists. The website uses a Truth-O-Meter to rate the accuracy of statements and then provides justification for the ranking. This is a great resource to find quick answers about the accuracy of information.

Resources to help you identify trustworthy information on the Internet

Fakey: This game, created and hosted by the Network Science Institute at Indiana University, is designed to simulate a social media newsfeed. Players click through examples and say whether they would Share, Like or Fact-Check the piece of news. Users test their willingness to share unreliable information.

News statements quiz The Pew Research Center created this simple quiz to test whether statements are fact or opinion. In the end, the user can find the percentages of correct other users, along with demographic information about those users.

Hoaxy This product is created by the collaborative group OSoMe, the Observatory on Social Media. Once you log in and select a topic, Hoaxy will create a timeline and show how stories are retweeted and whether the accounts are “bot-like” or likely human. One downside is that you do need to grant access to your Twitter feed to use this feature. This may be too esoteric for most but can help explain how information is disseminated on Twitter.