Rumor

A rumour or rumor (see spelling differences), is "an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern" (33)

Psychology of Rumor (1947)

In the 1947 study, Psychology of Rumor, Gordon Allport and Joseph Postman concluded that, "as rumor travels it [...] grows shorter, more concise, more easily grasped and told." This conclusion was based on a test of message diffusion between persons, which found that about 70% of details in a message were lost in the first 5-6 mouth-to-mouth transmissions.

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 test subject was then asked to describe the scene to a third, and so forth and so on. Each person’s reproduction was recorded. This process was repeated with different illustrations with very different settings and contents.

Allport and Postman used three terms to describe the movement of rumor. They are: leveling, sharpening, and assimilation. Leveling refers to the loss of detail during the transmission process; sharpening to the selection of certain details of which to transmit; and assimilation to a distortion in the transmission of information as a result of subconscious 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 illustration depicting a battle-scene, test subjects often incorrectly reported an ambulance truck in the background of the illustration as carrying “medical supplies,” when, in fact, it was clearly carrying boxes marked “TNT (102).”

Rumor as Social Cognition (2004)

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 probably reflective of a "collective explanation process." (35). This conclusion was based on an analysis of archived message board discussions in which the statements were coded and analyzed. It was found that 29.4% (the majority) of statements within these discussions could be coded as “sensemaking” statements, which involved, “[...]attempts at solving a problem.” (42) It was noted that the rest of the discussion was constructed around these statements, further reinforcing the idea of collective problem solving. The researchers also found that each rumor went through a four-stage pattern of development in which a rumor was introduced for discussion, information was volunteered and discussed, and finally a resolution was drawn or interest was lost (48).

For the study, archived discussions concerning rumors on the Internet and other computer networks such as BITnet were retrieved. As a rule, 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 following: prudent, apprehensive, authenticating, interrogatory, providing information, belief, disbelief, sensemaking, digressive, or uncodable. Each rumor discussion was then analyzed based on this coding system. A similar coding system based on statistical analysis was applied to each discussion as a whole, and the aforementioned four-stage pattern of rumor discussion emerged.

Rumor as Political Communication Strategy (2006)

In 2006, Harsin introduced the concept of the "rumor bomb" as a response to the widespread empirical phenomenon of rumoresque communication in relations between media and politics. Harsin takes the widespread definition of rumor as a claim whose truthfulness is in doubt and which often has no clear source even if its ideological or partisan origins and intents are clear. He then treats it as a particular rhetorical strategy in current contexts of media and politics in many societies. For Harsin a "rumor bomb extends the definition of rumor into a political communication concept with the following features: 1. A crisis of verification. A crisis of verification is perhaps the most salient and politically dangerous aspect of rumour. Berenson (1952) defines rumour as a kind of persuasive message involving a proposition that lacks 'secure standards of evidence' (Pendleton 1998). 2. A context of public uncertainty or anxiety about a political group, figure, or cause, which the rumor bomb overcomes or transfers onto an opponent. 3. A clearly partisan even if an anonymous source (in the Blair/Clinton/Bush, etc. government), which seeks to profit politically from the rumor bomb’s diffusion. 4. 4) A rapid diffusion via highly developed electronically mediated societies where news travels fast.

Rumors of affairs, of "weapons of mass destruction" and their alleged removal to other countries"John Kerry is French," Obama is a muslim, John McCain had an illegitimate black child--all of these involve statements whose veracity is in question or are simply false. Others are statements whose ambiguous nature makes them potentially appealling to different audiences who may interpret them in particular ways and circulate them. Harsin builds on rumor research that has emphasized social cognition and diffusion of propaganda. He extends Prashant and Difonzio's work in particular, since they attempt to distinguish rumor from gossip, in that rumor is supposedly about public issues and gossip is about private, trivial things. The emergence of infotainment and tabloidization in especially American and British news has broken that distinction, since politics is now just as much about bringing the private into the public view, as was clear with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. According to Harsin, rumor in politics has always existed, but recent changes have created an environment ripe for a new kind of political rumor: a new media "convergence culture," and new media technologies and business values that emphasize speed and circulation have combined with entertainment values in news, political marketing, and public craving of tabloid news that mirrors other entertainment genres.