Negative Rumors Research Articles

The Influence of Extraversion Personality, Peer Conformity, and School Climate on Relational Bullying in Boarding School Students

Relational bullying is a form of indirect bullying that often occurs in schools, involving acts of exclusion, neglect, spreading negative rumors, gossip, and social manipulation. This research aims to develop a theoretical model of relational bullying and determine the influence of extraversion personality, peer conformity, and school climate on it in boarding students. This research uses a quantitative approach. The study involved 210 madrasah tsanawiyah students boarding at Makrifatul Ilmi and Al Quraniyah Islamic boarding schools in South Bengkulu Regency. The results showed that theoretical models of influence can influence relational bullying among students. The R square value was 0.68, indicating that personality variables extraversion, peer conformity, and school climate can explain relational bullying by 68%. Extraverted personality had a positive effect on relational bullying, peer conformity had a positive effect, and school climate had a positive effect. This research contributes to the development of a more specific relational bullying theory model in psychology and suggests a holistic approach that includes guidance and counseling for teachers, collaboration between parents and the school, socialization and education for interventions to overcome relational bullying behavior.

Stigma in the Prolonged Pandemic: Insights from Nurses in Two Indonesian Provinces

Background Nurses in Indonesia have faced extraordinary challenges amid the prolonged coronavirus disease pandemic, including stigmatization. However, much is understood about this experience only from the initial period of the pandemic. Objective This study aimed to shed light on the enduring intensity of stigma experienced by nurses in protracted health crises. Materials and Methods This study is a part of a research project titled “Exploration of Stigma Towards Nurses in Indonesia During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” conducted 1.5 years after the pandemic onset. A qualitative descriptive approach was used. Thirty-three nurses from both urban and rural settings who encountered stigma in two Indonesian provinces participated in individual interviews using a semi-structured guide. Thematic analysis through the Framework Method was employed for data analysis. Results & Discussion Three themes emerged: 1) the dynamic of stigma intensity during a prolonged COVID-19 pandemic; 2) nurses’ points of reference when elucidating this intensity; and 3) the perceived contributing factors to the stigma intensity in the protracted pandemic. Participants reported experiencing stronger stigma in the early period of the pandemic. In the later period, some manifestations of stigma persisted, although not as strongly as before. When describing the intensity, nurses often referenced the frequency and strength of emotions stemming from stigmatizing behaviors—such as avoidance, rejection, suspicion, negative rumors, and disparaging remarks about the nursing profession. Eight contributing factors to stigma intensity were identified. Conclusion Stigma intensity during the prolonged pandemic appeared to have similarities and distinctions with the phenomena observed in previous health crises. Continuous evaluation and mitigation efforts are imperative to alleviate the stigma experienced by nurses in protracted health crises. Understanding the contributing factors to the dynamic nature of stigma intensity is crucial for developing targeted interventions.

The Drivers of Low Vaccination Utilization in Niger.

Vaccination adherence involves the expected benefit of a vaccine and the perceived risk of the disease. To develop an evidence-based communication strategy aimed at improving vaccination coverage in Niger, we conducted a mixed socio-anthropological study of the perceptions among the population on the benefit and the risk of the childhood (Expanded Program on Immunization) and the COVID-19 vaccines. Our results show that negative rumors are not a significant driver of vaccine refusal. The insufficient level of fully vaccinated, compared with partially vaccinated, children might be explained by misunderstandings around the side effects of vaccines and the necessity for full vaccination. Approximately one-fourth of the population is vaccinated against COVID-19, whereas 73.3% think that vaccines against the disease are a "good thing," and 83% of those who have heard messages promoting the vaccination approve of them. This apparent contradiction is explained by a low perception of the risks of COVID-19. More than half of the population surveyed believe that the disease is not present in the country. A large majority believe that only ill people can transmit the disease, whereas only 12.8% think they know anybody who has ever been sick with COVID-19. Three-fourths of the interviewees have seen images from around the world of persons sick or deceased from COVID-19; the same proportion has not seen any such images of affected patients in Niger. Communication to improve COVID-19 uptake should focus on the reality of the disease presence and its transmission and not on rumors surrounding the vaccines.

Husbands’ Migration and the Left-behind Wives: The Psychosocial Impacts on Life Experiences of the Women of District Quetta, Pakistan

Migration has always been a focus of social scientists for many reasons, especially its impacts on the families of those who migrate for a long period of time. The recent literature reveals that migration can have both pros and cons. Keeping in view the existing facts and figures, this research study was designed to explore the psycho-social impacts on the migrants’ families, especially their wives, as they take the primary responsibilities of their families after their husbands’ migration. The researchers used the qualitative method by using open-ended interviews for data collection and thematic analysis. It is explored that a husband’s migration has certain impacts on the left behind wives, such as distress, fear, disparities, insecurity, negative rumors, problems in movement, threats from in-laws and neighbors, and treatment as a laborer. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that left behind wives have many psychosocial barriers; hence, the government may provide emotional support to the migrants’ families in terms of their children’s education, health, and socialization and the other family members, such as in-laws may also take care of their children and socialize and reasonably treat them.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown: Firm network status and market response to negative rumors

This study investigates whether firm status in networks is a burden in the context of negative rumors. We use a network approach to capture firms' network of affiliations through cross-shareholding and to identify status hierarchies embedded in the relational structure. Using a sample of 1428 negative rumors related to 913 firms during the period 2007–2015, we find that the market responds negatively to negative rumors and that high-status firms suffer more than low-status firms do. Our mechanism tests show that high-status firms attract more attention from the media than low-status firms and that differential media attention plays a mediating role in the relationship between firm status and market response to rumors. In addition, we find that investor sentiment strengthens the status-market response relation. Further analyses show that although high-status firms vigorously deny rumors by rumor clarification announcements, their denial strategy does not function as intended. These results provide robust evidence that status is a burden when encountering negative rumors and that media play an essential role in facilitating the relationship between firm status and market reaction to negative rumors.

Negative tourism rumors towards user online citizenship behavior: the differential influence of correction sources

Purpose Negative rumors damage the destination’s image and tourist experience. This study aims to compare how rumor correction sources (government vs business vs tourist) affect user online citizenship behavior (UOCB). Design/methodology/approach Based on the stimuli-organism-response framework, a hypothetical model was established from rumor correction to UOCB. Three scenario experiments (more than 1,000 valid samples) were designed. Study 1 illustrated the effects of different rumor corrections, Study 2 was designed to verify the mediating effects of sympathy and perceived information authenticity (PIA) and the robustness of results was demonstrated in Study 3. Findings Government correction elicited the highest sympathy and PIA. Business correction was less than tourist correction in arousing sympathy but better than tourist correction in enhancing PIA. Sympathy and PIA had a mediating effect on the relationship between rumor correction and UOCB. Practical implications This study helps to identify the different advantages of rumor correctors and provides insights to prevent the deterioration of negative tourism rumors or even reverse these crises. Originality/value This study innovates research perspective of negative tourism rumor governance, expands the understanding of the effect and process of rumor correction and enriches the research content of tourism crisis communication.

Rumor behaviors as collective problem-solving: The moderating roles of regulatory focus

Approaching rumors as a form of collective problem-solving, this study investigated how regulatory focus (i.e., prevention vs. promotion) interacts with rumor valence to affect rumor behaviors via community motives using an experiment with 534 Korean citizens. The analysis showed that positive rumors (vs. negative) elicit stronger information seeking intentions among low promotion-focus individuals. Also, when exposed to negative rumors (vs. positive), both high prevention- and promotion-focus individuals showed stronger community motives, increasing both their rumor transmitting and information seeking intentions.

Factors affecting rumor believability in the context of COVID-19: the moderating roles of government trust and health literacy

ABSTRACT This study explores the mediating role of prior exposure to a rumor in the relationship between anxiety and rumor believability, and the moderated mediation thereof by government trust and health literacy. A total of 534 participants aged 19–59 were recruited from a research survey panel in an early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea. Using two negative COVID-19 rumors, prior exposure to a rumor and rumor believability were measured for each rumor. The results showed that anxiety about COVID-19 led to rumor believability, mediated by prior exposure to a rumor. Government trust moderated the relationship between anxiety and rumor exposure in both rumor cases. Health literacy moderated the relationship between anxiety and rumor believability only in the rumor about lung damage caused by COVID-19.

RumorDecay: Rumor Dissemination Interruption for Target Recipients in Social Networks

Rumors (i.e., untrue emergence saying of COVID-19 in an area) that rapidly disseminate on the ubiquitous social media easily cause public panics and irrational behaviors (e.g., taking unnecessary medicine) of many very sensitive individuals referred to as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">target recipients</i> . Thus, rumor controlling or blocking for these target recipients is very critical, which differs from the traditional way of protecting all individuals and remains an open and challenging problem so far. In this work, on the basis that rumors are disseminated from the given sources to target recipients via multiple paths which may be significantly interrupted by deleting a few key links referred to as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">protectors</i> , we first mathematically define a general target information disseminating (TID) model and do theoretical proofs. Second, based on the TID model, we introduce a random walk algorithm to sample the paths of rumor dissemination for recipients. Third, aiming at deleting a budget-limited set of protectors efficiently in a large number of selected paths to reduce or weaken the negative rumor influences on the target recipients, we propose a heuristical strategy-based rumor influence decay mechanism referred to as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RumorDecay</i> (i.e., RumorDecay <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula> hop nearest neighbor method and RumorDecay <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula> hop random walk method in this work) which can locate the optimal protectors quickly and efficiently. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on many real social networks and the results show that the RumorDecay strategy can significantly weaken the rumor dissemination ability with less time cost.

Does social media distort price discovery? Evidence from rumor clarifications

Using a sample of clarification announcements for all A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2020, we reveal the influence of social media activities on price discovery after rumor clarifications in China. As big information events, rumors significantly impact return performance before and after the official release. For the influences of social media activities, these activities intensify the short-term market’s response to clarification announcements, while in the long-term period, the influences of social media activity are variant: it speeds return reversal for the whole sample, insignificantly influences return reversal following positive rumor clarifications, and has a varied impact on price persistence following negative rumor clarifications. Our findings are robust when controlling return-related determinants and using new proxies for social media activities and CARs. The results based on rumor clarifications announced during the non-trading period further support the causality. Therefore, we determine the impact of social media activities on price discovery following rumor clarifications.

Impact of Rumors Prevalence and Workplace Ostracism on Organizational Cynicism and Psychological Contract Violation

Why do rumors make it difficult for subordinates to follow their bosses' orders? How do managers keep rumors from having a negative impact? Are workplace ostracism and psychological contract violations breaches motivated by organizational cynicism and/ or negative rumors? Is there a connection between optimistic rumors and the fulfillment of psychological contracts? a sample of (327) academics from Egypt's private universities were surveyed. 'a four-part questionnaire that evaluates the study' axes (workplace ostracism, positive and/ or negative rumors prevalence, organizational cynicism and psychological contract violation).

Discussing the Effect of Students' Crisis Awareness on Emotion During the COVID-19 Pandemic From the Perspective of Trust.

The effects of crises vary among individuals, societies, and nations. Governments' crisis management is quite different from that of non-governmental organizations, especially in terms of “publicity,” since it involves bureaucracy to address people's accountability concerns. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between students' crisis awareness, trust, and emotions in the event of a major public health emergency. A questionnaire survey was conducted for this study. A total of 500 copies of questionnaires were distributed to the college students in Jiangxi. Among those, 437 valid copies were retrieved, with a retrieval rate of 87%. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to conduct the statistical analyses. The research results were summarized as follows: (1) At the stage of epidemic spread, people can easily fall into the negative emotion. (2) The society with a good trust relationship considers schools less responsible for critical incidents and more helpful for crisis communication. (3) Reducing the negative emotions of the public after the occurrence of critical incidents can effectively reduce the damage of critical incidents to the organization. Avoiding a loss of student confidence and increasing anger, protecting the school's reputation, having a good communication effect, and minimizing the impact of the crisis can help the students develop better trust toward the school. When a crisis occurs on campus, this can reduce the possibility of students' showing negative emotions and spreading rumors. It is considered that the findings provide guidance on how to optimize the management of public health crisis situations and improve students' mental health.

Fighting negative rumors with trust-based rumor-refutation strategy

ABSTRACT Rumors about brands and products are a growing problem on social media, but systematic research on rumor-refutation strategies for various brands is limited. To advance research on rumor-refutation effects in the context of commercial rumor outbreaks, and to help brand managers better fight detrimental rumors against their brands, this study examined: 1) the influences of source trust (the degree to which the transmitter source of a rumor-refutation message is trusted by others within a social network) on the effectiveness of a rumor-refutation message, and 2) potential interaction effects of source trust and trust cues embedded in a rumor-refutation message. Using an interdisciplinary multi-method approach combining experimental and computational research approaches, findings demonstrate significant effects of the source trust factor on belief and retransmission intention of rumor-refutation. The results revealed an interesting moderating effect of the trust-cue factor. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Exposure to workplace bullying and negative gossip behaviors: Buffering roles of personal and contextual resources

AbstractThis study adds to business ethics research by investigating how employees' exposure to workplace bullying might spur their negative gossip behaviors, as well as how this effect might be buffered by their access to two personal resources (religiosity and innovation propensity) and two contextual resources (work meaningfulness and trust in top management). Survey data collected among Canadian‐based employees who work in the religious sector reveal that workplace bullying increases the likelihood that they spread negative rumors about other organizational members, but this effect is weaker when employees (1) can draw from their religious faith, (2) are motivated to generate innovative ideas, (3) derive meaning from their work, and (4) have confidence in the trustworthiness of top management. For management scholars and practitioners, this study thus pinpoints different resources that diminish the risk that workplace bullying infuses work environments with even more negative energy, as might occur if bullying spills over into additional, negative gossip behaviors.

Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions.

Brand rumors can harm brands’ image and bring significant impacts on customers’ decision-making and sharing behavior. Finding practical strategies for preventing the spread of brand rumors continues to be a challenge. Building on the social contagion theory, the current research enriches the discussion on understanding why people spread rumors and how to deal with the spreading of rumors. Sharing brand rumors is motivated by a variety of complex psychological reasons, but prior research didn’t adequately analyze the problem from a complexity perspective. Therefore, using a sample of 416 interviewers within eight types of brand rumors, this study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the combination of rumor psychological communication motivations in brand activities and solutions to prevent the spread of brand rumors. The current study discoveries three and two first-level configurational solutions, respectively, that can promote positive and negative rumor spreading. To summarize, emotional stimulation is a key component in the spread of rumors; altruism and relationship management motivation can coexist at times; and untrusted rumors are disseminated through other motivation factors. Solutions to prevent rumors from spreading are also provided. Furthermore, the findings help to understand the psychology of configurational motivation and how it can help brands reduce the spread of brand rumors. Finally, these discoveries’ theoretical contributions and practical implications are presented.

Sentiment Analysis of Rumor Spread Amid COVID-19: Based on Weibo Text.

(1) Background: in early 2020, COVID-19 broke out. Driven by people’s psychology of conformity, panic, group polarization, etc., various rumors appeared and spread wildly, and the Internet became a hotbed of rumors. (2) Methods: the study selected Weibo as the research media, using topic models, time series analysis, sentiment analysis, and Granger causality testing methods to analyze the social media texts related to COVID-19 rumors. (3) Results: in study 1, we obtained 21 topics related to “COVID-19 rumors” and “outbreak rumors” after conducting topic model analysis on Weibo texts; in study 2, we explored the emotional changes of netizens before and after rumor dispelling information was released and found people’s positive emotions first declined and then rose; in study 3, we also explored the emotional changes of netizens before and after the “Wuhan lockdown” event and found positive sentiment of people in non-Wuhan areas increased, while negative sentiment of people in Wuhan increased; in study 4, we studied the relationship between rumor spread and emotional polarity and found negative sentiment and rumor spread was causally interrelated. (4) Conclusion: These findings could help us to intuitively understand the impact of rumors spread on people’s emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic and help the government take measures to reduce panic.

A Study on the Reliability Differences in Social Coherence, Rumor Trust, and Corporate Response Strategies Due to the Negative Rumors of a Hair salon by Demographic Characteristics

The rapid development of the media can cause not only negative effects on the company but also financial loss and image damage as a medium for the rapid delivery of the corporate crisis to the public. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify differences in consumer confidence, rumor trust, and response strategies based on demographic characteristics of hair salons, and to provide basic data for future marketing strategies to prevent negative rumors in the beauty industry. This study used 265 copies for the final analysis. First, the demographic of those surveyed is married to college/graduation, many female employees in their 20s are more than 4 million won a month, and secondly, there are more than 7 years, 1 to 3 times a month, and thirdly, there are less than 50,000 to 100,000 won, and all the differences in your average monthly income. The reliability of the response strategies of other beauty companies was partly significant for gender and age only. Rumors no longer spread to large corporations or celebrities. The beauty industry is a highly dependent industry on human resources in that it provides intangible services and directly delivers services by beauty workers. In addition, it is natural for people to have different perspectives because each beauty salon has different prices and services. Therefore, beauty companies should try to be honest and reliable with each customer and when providing beauty services. Keywords: Corporate response strategies; Rumor; Rumor trust; Social assistance

İŞLETMELERDE DEDİKODU VE KAVRAMSAL BİR İNCELEME

Gossip is an important issue that exist in societies and causes many problems to arise. According to the degree of accuracy, it is a situation that injures and slanders individuals and institutions and causes them to be humiliated in front of the society, causing even families and institutions to dissolve. The speed and number of gossips, rumors which are not approved in religious terms, have been increasing more recently through social media. It causes environments of gossip, insecurity, chaos and injustice in business. Negative rumors cause financial and moral costs for business and employees. Of course, it may not possible to eliminate gossip completely. However, it will be useful to find ways to prevent unfair situations in businesses and turn gossip into an advantage. There is very little research on gossip in the literature. This article includes the evaluation of the positive and negative aspects of gossip for businesses.

Integrating machine learning and open data into social Chatbot for filtering information rumor.

Social networks have become a major platform for people to disseminate information, which can include negative rumors. In recent years, rumors on social networks has caused grave problems and considerable damages. We attempted to create a method to verify information from numerous social media messages. We propose a general architecture that integrates machine learning and open data with a Chatbot and is based cloud computing (MLODCCC), which can assist users in evaluating information authenticity on social platforms. The proposed MLODCCC architecture consists of six integrated modules: cloud computing, machine learning, data preparation, open data, chatbot, and intelligent social application modules. Food safety has garnered worldwide attention. Consequently, we used the proposed MLODCCC architecture to develop a Food Safety Information Platform (FSIP) that provides a friendly hyperlink and chatbot interface on Facebook to identify credible food safety information. The performance and accuracy of three binary classification algorithms, namely the decision tree, logistic regression, and support vector machine algorithms, operating in different cloud computing environments were compared. The binary classification accuracy was 0.769, which indicates that the proposed approach accurately classifies using the developed FSIP.

Contraceptive implant uptake in Kenya versus South Africa: Lessons for new implantable technologies

Abstract Contraceptive implant use has been rapidly increasing across much of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past decade; however, this uptake has not been uniform. In this commentary we explore two country-level case studies with differing experiences with the contraceptive implant: Kenya and South Africa. The implant has been available in Kenya for over 25 years, and prevalence among married women is the highest in the world at 22.8%. While the implant has been available for only five years in South Africa, implant insertions have been declining since an introductory surge. HIV prevention and multipurpose prevention technology implants currently in development could substantially impact health outcomes in SSA, but perceptions of future implants may be linked to perceptions of current contraceptive implants. As such, it is important to reflect on the implications of lessons learned from the rollout of contraceptive implants for these future implants. This case comparison offers an opportunity for developers and implementers of future implants to thoughtfully consider how to plan ahead for better service delivery, including delivery points, provider training, and communication strategies to counteract negative rumors.