Candice Marie Benbow | the grio
To combat this targeted misinformation, Lewis has joined forces with Truth Check, an initiative led by The Center for Black Health & Equity, to provide African Americans with social media literacy training in hopes of helping users bring their fact-checking skills to determine the accuracy of information they receive about the COVID-19 vaccines.
On its website, Truth Check offers a 20-minute training that enables users to quickly identify misleading information. Lewis said the training is vital, given how sophisticated misinformation campaigns have become. “There are a lot of things out there that can confuse you. What this site did for me is helped to clarify them.”
As African-Americans continue to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, Lewis believes Truth Check’s training is a matter of life and death. “The lies affect our health and is affecting our overall quality of life,” she said. “We’ve got to take the time to go past the headline and simply ‘liking’ everything and actually doing our research.”
