This article is about the character of message. For the album by Fleetwood Mac, see Rumours ( album ). For early uses, see Rumor ( disambiguation ) A rumor ( american english English ), or rumour ( british English ; see spell differences ; derived from Latin : ‘ rumorem ‘ – noise ), is “ a improbable narrative of explanations of events circulating from person to person and pertain to an object, event, or issue in populace refer. ” [ 1 ]
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In the social sciences, a rumor involves a form of a argument whose veracity is not cursorily or ever confirmed. In addition, some scholars have identified rumor as a subset of propaganda. Sociology, psychology, and communication studies have widely varying definitions of rumor. [ 2 ] Rumors are besides often discussed with esteem to “ misinformation ” and “ disinformation ” ( the former much seen as just false and the latter seen as intentionally fake, though normally from a politics reservoir given to the media or a foreign government ). [ 3 ] Rumors frankincense have much been viewed as particular forms of other communication concepts .
early work [edit ]
french and german sociable science research on rumor locates the modern scholarly definition of it to the pioneer ferment of the german William Stern in 1902. [ 4 ] Stern experimented on rumor involving a “ chain of subjects ” who passed a fib from “ mouth to ear ” without the right to repeat or explain it. He found that the narrative was shortened and changed by the time it reached the end of the chain. His student was another initiate in the field, Gordon Allport. The experiment is alike to the children ‘s game chinese whispers .
A Psychology of Rumor ( 1944 ) [edit ]
“ A Psychology of Rumor ” was published by Robert H. Knapp [ francium ] in 1944, in which he reports on his analysis of over one thousand rumors during World War II that were printed in the Boston Herald’ s “ Rumor Clinic “ Column. He defines rumor as
a proposition for impression of topical reference point disseminated without official verification . So formidably defined, rumor is but a special case of informal social communications, including myth, legend, and current humor. From myth and legend it is distinguished by its emphasis on the topical. Where humor is designed to provoke laughter, rumor begs for belief.[5]
Knapp identified three basic characteristics that apply to rumor :
- they’re transmitted by word of mouth;
- they provide “information” about a “person, happening, or condition”; and
- they express and gratify “the emotional needs of the community.”
crucial to this definition and its characteristics is the emphasis on transmission ( word of talk, which then was heard and reported in the newspaper ) ; on content ( “ topical ” means that it can somehow be distinguished from superficial and private subjects—its domain is public issues ) ; and on reception ( “ emotional needs of the community ” suggests that though it is received by an individual from an individual, it is not comprehended in individual but community or sociable terms ). Based on his survey of the newspaper column, Knapp divided those rumors into three types :
- Pipe dream rumors: reflect public desires and wished-for outcomes (e.g. Japan’s oil reserves were low and thus World War II would soon end).
- Bogie or fear rumors reflect feared outcomes (e.g. An enemy surprise attack is imminent).
- Wedge-driving rumors intend to undermine group loyalty or interpersonal relations (e.g. American Catholics were seeking to avoid the draft; German-Americans, Italian-Americans, Japanese-Americans were not loyal to the American side).
Knapp besides found that negative rumors were more probable to be disseminated than positive rumors. These types besides differentiate between plus ( organ pipe dream ) and minus ( bogey and wedge-driving ) rumors .
The Psychology of Rumor ( 1947 ) [edit ]
In the 1947 study, The Psychology of Rumor, Gordon Allport and Leo Postman concluded that, “ as rumor travels it [ … ] grows shorter, more concise, more easily grasped and told. ” [ 6 ] This conclusion was based on a test of message dispersion between persons, which found that about 70 % of details in a message were lost in the first 5-6 mouth-to-mouth transmissions. [ 6 ] In the experiment, a test subject was shown an illustration and given time to look it over. They were then asked to describe the scene from memory to a second test subject. This second base test subject was then asked to describe the scene to a third base, and so forth and so on. Each person ‘s replica was recorded. This action was repeated with different illustrations with identical unlike settings and contents. Allport and Postman used three terms to describe the motion of rumor. They are : leveling, sharpening, and assimilation. Leveling refers to the loss of detail during the transmission march ; sharpening to the selection of certain details of which to transmit ; and assimilation to a distortion in the infection of information as a consequence of subconscious mind motivations. assimilation was observed when test subjects described the illustrations as they ought to be but not as they actually were. For example, in an exemplification depicting a battle-scene, test subjects often incorrectly reported an ambulance truck in the backdrop of the exemplification as carrying “ checkup supplies, ” when, in fact, it was intelligibly carrying boxes marked “ TNT ( 102 ). ”
Social Cognition [edit ]
In 2004, Prashant Bordia and Nicholas DiFonzo published their Problem Solving in Social Interactions on the Internet: Rumor As Social Cognition and found that rumor transmission is credibly brooding of a “ collective explanation process. ” [ 7 ] This stopping point was based on an analysis of archive message board discussions in which the statements were coded and analysed. It was found that 29 % ( the majority ) of statements within these discussions could be coded as “ sense-making ” statements, which involved, “ [ … ] attempts at solving a problem. ” [ 7 ]
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It was noted that the respite of the discussion was constructed around these statements, further reinforcing the theme of collective trouble clear. The researchers besides found that each rumor went through a four-stage practice of development in which a rumor was introduced for discussion, information was volunteered and discussed, and ultimately a resolution was drawn or interest was lost. [ 7 ] For the analyze, archived discussions concerning rumors on the internet and early calculator networks such as BITnet were retrieved. As a predominate, each discussion had a minimum of five statements posted over a period of at least two days. The statements were then coded as being one of the follow : prudent, apprehensive, authenticating, interrogatory, providing information, belief, disbelief, sense-making, digressive, or un-codable. Each rumor discussion was then analysed based on this code system. A exchangeable tease system based on statistical analysis was applied to each discussion as a whole, and the aforesaid four-stage radiation pattern of rumor discussion emerged. There are four components of managing rumors that both of you need to understand for the sake of your relationship ’ s success. [ clarification needed ] The first base, anxiety (situational and personality), is when people who either have a more anxious personality, or people who are in an anxiety- lift situation are more likely to create rumors in rate to relieve some of their insecurities. The second part of managing rumors is ambiguity. Ambiguity is when person is not certain about what is going on, so they end up assuming the worst. The third component is information importance. . information is key, and if that information is not fat or if it does not sake people, there won ’ thyroxine be rumors, but information can often be faithlessly. information can besides be ambiguous. The last component of managing rumors is credibility. Rumors are frequently spread by sources that are not credible. A rumor itself is not credible unless it is proven to be true. That is why people say to never trust the tabloids .
political Communication Strategy [edit ]
Rumor has constantly played a major role in politics, with negative rumors about an opponent typically more effective than convinced rumors about one ‘s own side. [ 8 ]
“ Propaganda is neutrally defined as a taxonomic form of purposeful opinion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specify prey audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the operate infection of biased messages ( which may or may not be factual ) via mass and lead media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion. ”
Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996
In the past, much inquiry on rumor came from psychological approaches ( as the discussion of Allport and DiFonzio demonstrates above ). The focus was particularly on how statements of questionable veracity ( absolutely false to the ears of some listeners ) circulated orally from person to person. scholarly attention to political rumors is at least a erstwhile as Aristotle ‘s Rhetoric ; however, not until recently has any sustained attention and conceptual development been directed at political uses of rumor, outside of its role in war situations. Almost no work had been done until recently on how different forms of media and particular cultural-historical conditions may facilitate a rumor ‘s diffusion. [ 9 ] The Internet ‘s holocene appearance as a new media engineering has shown ever new possibilities for the fast diffusion of rumor, as the debunking sites such as snopes.com, urbanlegend.com, and factcheck.org demonstrate. Nor had previous research taken into consideration the particular form or expressive style of intentionally chosen rumors for political purposes in detail circumstances ( even though significant attention to the baron of rumor for mass-media-diffused war propaganda has been in vogue since World War I ; see Lasswell 1927 ). [ 9 ] In the early separate of the twenty-first hundred, some legal scholars have attended to political uses of rumor, though their conceptualization of it remains social psychological and their solutions to it as public trouble are from a legal scholarly perspective, largely having to do with libel and privacy laws and the damage to personal reputations. [ 10 ] Working within political communication studies, in 2006, Jayson Harsin [ 11 ] [ 12 ] introduced the concept of the “ rumor bomb calorimeter ” as a response to the far-flung empiric phenomenon of rumoresque communication in contemporary relations between media and politics, specially within the complex overlap of multiple forms of media, from cell phones and internet, to radio, television receiver, and print. Harsin starts with the far-flung definition of rumor as a claim whose truthfulness is in doubt and which often has no clean source even if its ideological or enthusiast origins and intents are clear. He then treats it as a particular rhetorical scheme in current context of media and politics in many societies. For Harsin a “ rumor bombard ” extends the definition of rumor into a political communication concept with the follow features :
- A crisis of verification. – A crisis of verification is perhaps the most salient and politically dangerous aspect of rumor. Berenson (1952) defines rumor as a kind of persuasive message involving a proposition that lacks ‘secure standards of evidence’ (Pendleton 1998).[13]
- A context of public uncertainty or anxiety about a political group, figure, or cause, which the rumor bomb overcomes or transfers onto an opponent.
- A clearly partisan even if an anonymous source (e.g. “an unnamed advisor to the president”), which seeks to profit politically from the rumor bomb’s diffusion.
- A rapid diffusion via highly developed electronically mediated societies where news travels fast.
In summation, Harsin locates the “ rumor turkey ” within other communication genres, such as disinformation ( intentional false information ) and propaganda, as rumor has been viewed by others. however, he distinguishes it from these concepts arsenic well, since disinformation is frequently excessively associated with government, and propaganda is attempts to control opinion without respect for ethics and accuracy of statement. similarly, “ spin “ is a generic terminus for strategic political communication that attempts to frame or re-frame an event or a statement in a way that is politically profitable for one side and damaging to another, though at its core it may simply be a red herring ( Bennett 2003, p. 130 ). [ 14 ] In summation, a “ blot campaign “ is a terminus that loosely means a coordinate campaign to attack a person ‘s fictional character. Unlike a “ smudge campaign, ” rumor bombs need not be about discrediting a person ( as is the case, for case, in claims about Iraq and 9/11 or weapons of mass end moved to Syria ). “ Spin ” besides specifically refers to an consequence and its re-framing. Rumor fail may seek to produce events themselves. A rumor bomb calorimeter can be seen as having some characteristics of these general concepts, but rumor bombs happen in very particular cultural and historical conditions. They are not about mouth-to-ear interpersonal rumors as much rumor research has been concerned in. They begin in a rapport between careful “ disinformers ” and media, whether television newsworthiness, talk shows, newspapers, radio receiver, or websites. They then circulate across these media, possibly but not necessarily resulting in interpersonal mouth-to-ear rumor dissemination. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] Harsin distinguishes the rumor fail from other more cosmopolitan concepts of rumor by emphasizing changes in politics, media technology, and culture. According to Harsin, rumor in politics has always existed, but late changes have created an environment good for a modern kind of political rumor : a modern media “ convergence culture ” where information produced on the internet can influence the product of media message in other forms ; newfangled media technologies and business values that emphasize speed and circulation that compound with entertainment values in news, political marketing, and public craving of yellow journalism news program that mirrors other entertainment genres. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] Rumors of affairs, of “ weapons of batch destruction ” and their allege removal to other countries [ 17 ] “ John Kerry is french, ” [ 18 ] Obama is a Muslim, John McCain had an bastard black child [ 19 ] —all of these imply statements whose veracity is in wonder or that are plainly faithlessly. early statements may have an equivocal nature that makes them potentially appealing to different audiences who may interpret them in particular ways and circulate them. Harsin builds on rumor inquiry that has emphasized social cognition and dissemination of propaganda. He extends Prashant and Difonzio ‘s workplace in particular, since they attempt to distinguish rumor from chitchat, in that rumor is purportedly about public issues and chew the fat is approximately private, superficial things. The emergence of documentary and tabloidization in particularly american and british news has broken that differentiation, since politics is nowadays precisely american samoa much about bringing the individual into the public view, as was clear with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal .
Strategic Communication [edit ]
like to their appearance and routine in political communication, wherein rumors can be deployed for specific deleterious impression ( rumor bomb calorimeter ) or can otherwise plague a candidate for office, rumors besides play an crucial function in strategic communication. Strategic communication is the serve of crafting messages in back of specific organizational goals, and is normally concerned with governments, militaries and Non-Governmental Organizations ( NGOs ). Adroit strategic communication requires an understand of stories, trends and memes circulating within a culture.
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Rumors can be viewed as stories that seem intellectual but that are steeped into speculation, in connection with a certain narrative landscape ( the huge align of cultural expression circulating within a community or region ). [ 20 ] In their book, Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism and the Struggle for Strategic Influence, co-authors Daniel Bernardi, Pauline Hope Cheong, Chris Lundry and Scott W. Ruston coin the condition narrative IED to help explain the function and danger of rumors in a strategic communication context. Rumors, as narrative IEDs, are low-cost, low-tech communication weapons that can be used by anyone to disrupt the efforts of communication, civil affairs or outreach campaigns such as those undertake by governments in crisis reception situations or militaries in insurgencies. As Bernardi notes, “ Like their explosive cousins, rumors can be created and planted by closely anybody, want limited resources to utilize, can be deadly for those in its send path, and can instil fear ”. [ 21 ]