Content Of Rumor Research Articles

Difference in Rumor Dissemination and Debunking Before and After the Relaxation of COVID-19 Prevention and Control Measures in China: Infodemiology Study.

The information epidemic emerged along with the COVID-19 pandemic. While controlling the spread of COVID-19, the secondary harm of epidemic rumors to social order cannot be ignored. The objective of this paper was to understand the characteristics of rumor dissemination before and after the pandemic and the corresponding rumor management and debunking mechanisms. This study aimed to provide a theoretical basis and effective methods for relevant departments to establish a sound mechanism for managing network rumors related to public health emergencies such as COVID-19. This study collected data sets of epidemic rumors before and after the relaxation of the epidemic prevention and control measures, focusing on large-scale network rumors. Starting from 3 dimensions of rumor content construction, rumor propagation, and rumor-refuting response, the epidemic rumors were subdivided into 7 categories, namely, involved subjects, communication content, emotional expression, communication channels, communication forms, rumor-refuting subjects, and verification sources. Based on this framework, content coding and statistical analysis of epidemic rumors were carried out. The study found that the rumor information was primarily directed at a clear target audience. The main themes of rumor dissemination were related to the public's immediate interests in the COVID-19 field, with significant differences in emotional expression and mostly negative emotions. Rumors mostly spread through social media interactions, community dissemination, and circle dissemination, with text content as the main form, but they lack factual evidence. The preferences of debunking subjects showed differences, and the frequent occurrence of rumors reflected the unsmooth channels of debunking. The χ2 test of data before and after the pandemic showed that the P value was less than .05, indicating that the difference in rumor content before and after the pandemic had statistical significance. This study's results showed that the themes of rumors during the pandemic are closely related to the immediate interests of the public, and the emotions of the public accelerate the spread of these rumors, which are mostly disseminated through social networks. Therefore, to more effectively prevent and control the spread of rumors during the pandemic and to enhance the capability to respond to public health crises, relevant authorities should strengthen communication with the public, conduct emotional risk assessments, and establish a joint mechanism for debunking rumors.

Graph Convolutional-Based Deep Residual Modeling for Rumor Detection on Social Media

The popularity and development of social media have made it more and more convenient to spread rumors, and it has become especially important to detect rumors in massive amounts of information. Most of the traditional rumor detection methods use the rumor content or propagation structure to mine rumor characteristics, ignoring the fusion characteristics of the content and structure and their interaction. Therefore, a novel rumor detection method based on heterogeneous convolutional networks is proposed. First, this paper constructs a heterogeneous map that combines both the rumor content and propagation structure to explore their interaction during rumor propagation and obtain a rumor representation. On this basis, this paper uses a deep residual graph convolutional neural network to construct the content and structure interaction information of the current network propagation model. Finally, this paper uses the Twitter15 and Twitter16 datasets to verify the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed method has higher detection accuracy compared to the traditional rumor detection method.

Like wildfire: creating rumor content in the face of disaster

ABSTRACT Rumors spread during disasters as community members seek information and attempt to make sense of unexpected, anxiety-producing events. While considerable sociological research has examined the transmission and spread of rumors, less attention has been given to the creation of rumor narrative content itself. Drawing on interviews with wildfire survivors in one rural Northern California county, this study shows that rumor narrative creation reflects existing cultural values and power arrangements. In a contested post-disaster landscape, rumors are used to frame new information to maintain coherence with existing cultural beliefs while reinforcing prevailing ideas about safety, deservingness, and class. In this case, rumors are created to reflect cultural schemas such as beliefs about the government and environmental protection, and normative power arrangements instantiated through symbols of spatial stigma. The data presented in this article extends research on stigma, culture, and disaster by arguing existing dominant cultural values shape the content of rumors by dictating which pieces of information are seen as reasonable and reliable, providing residents with opportunities to frame information to explain and justify unequal disaster outcomes. In disaster situations where the transmission of reliable information is especially important, local culture enables and restricts which narratives are produced, shared, and believed.

COVID-19-Related Rumor Content, Transmission, and Clarification Strategies in China: Descriptive Study.

BackgroundGiven the permeation of social media throughout society, rumors spread faster than ever before, which significantly complicates government responses to public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.ObjectiveWe aimed to examine the characteristics and propagation of rumors during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and evaluated the effectiveness of health authorities’ release of correction announcements.MethodsWe retrieved rumors widely circulating on social media in China during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and assessed the effectiveness of official government clarifications and popular science articles refuting those rumors.ResultsWe show that the number of rumors related to the COVID-19 pandemic fluctuated widely in China between December 1, 2019 and April 15, 2020. Rumors mainly occurred in 3 provinces: Hubei, Zhejiang, and Guangxi. Personal social media accounts constituted the major source of media reports of the 4 most widely distributed rumors (the novel coronavirus can be prevented with “Shuanghuanglian”: 7648/10,664, 71.7%; the novel coronavirus is the SARS coronavirus: 14,696/15,902, 92.4%; medical supplies intended for assisting Hubei were detained by the local government: 3911/3943, 99.2%; asymptomatically infected persons were regarded as diagnosed COVID-19 patients with symptoms in official counts: 322/323, 99.7%). The number of rumors circulating was positively associated with the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic (ρ=0.88, 95% CI 0.81-0.93). The release of correction articles was associated with a substantial decrease in the proportion of rumor reports compared to accurate reports. The proportions of negative sentiments appearing among comments by citizens in response to media articles disseminating rumors and disseminating correct information differ insignificantly (both correct reports: χ12=0.315, P=.58; both rumors: χ12=0.025, P=.88; first rumor and last correct report: χ12=1.287, P=.26; first correct report and last rumor: χ12=0.033, P=.86).ConclusionsOur results highlight the importance and urgency of monitoring and correcting false or misleading reports on websites and personal social media accounts. The circulation of rumors can influence public health, and government bodies should establish guidelines to monitor and mitigate the negative impact of such rumors.

#Unconfirmed: Classifying Rumor Stance in Crisis-Related Social Media Messages

It is well-established that within crisis-related communications, rumors are likely to emerge. False rumors, i.e. misinformation, can be detrimental to crisis communication and response; it is therefore important not only to be able to identify messages that propagate rumors, but also corrections or denials of rumor content. In this work, we explore the task of automatically classifying rumor stances expressed in crisisrelated content posted on social media. Utilizing a dataset of over 4,300 manually coded tweets, we build a supervised machine learning model for this task, achieving an accuracy over 88% across a diverse set of rumors of different types.

Characteristics of rumors and rumor victims in early adolescence: Rumor content and social impact

AbstractDespite the prominence of rumor spreading in early adolescence, little research has examined the features of rumors during this developmental period. To address this gap in the literature, we analyzed rumor reports in a longitudinal study from fifth to seventh grades to identify subtypes of rumor content and to investigate gender and grade differences, the social impact of rumors, and victims’ social status across rumor content. In seventh grade, a higher proportion of girls were victims of sexual activity rumors whereas a higher proportion of boys were victims of sexual orientation rumors. There were significantly more sexual activity rumors in seventh grade than fifth and sixth grade. In sixth and seventh grade, sexual activity rumors had higher social impact compared to all other rumors. Higher social status was found for victims of romantic rumors in fifth grade, for victims of personal/physical characteristics rumors in sixth grade, and for victims of sexual activity rumors in seventh grade. These findings provide critical insight into rumors across early adolescence and add to growing evidence that victims of aggressive behavior may have high social status. The importance of incorporating multiple methods for assessing victimization and implications for awareness of rumor spreading are discussed.

Rumors About Cancer: Content, Sources, Coping, Transmission, and Belief

Using a sense-making and threat management framework in rumor psychology, the authors used an exploratory web survey (n = 169) to query members of online cancer discussion groups about informal cancer statements heard from nonmedical sources (i.e., cancer rumors). Respondents perceived that rumors helped them cope. Dread rumors exceeded wish rumors; secondary control (control through emotional coping) rumors outnumbered primary control (direct action) rumors. Rumor content focused on cancer lethality, causes, and suffering. Rumors came primarily from family or friends in face-to-face conversations. Respondents discussed rumors with medical personnel primarily for fact-finding purposes, but with nonmedical people for altruistic, emotional coping, or relationship enhancement motives. Transmitters (vs. nontransmitters) considered rumors to be more important, were more anxious, and felt rumors helped them cope better, but did not believe them more strongly or feel that they were less knowledgeable about cancer. Most respondents believed the rumors; confidence was based on trust in family or friends (disregarding source nonexpertise) and concordance with beliefs, attitudes, and experience. Results point toward the fruitfulness of using rumor theory to guide research on cancer rumors and suggest that rumors help people achieve a sense of emotional control for dreaded cancer outcomes, inform the social construction of cancer, and highlight the continuing importance of nonelectronic word of mouth.

Gando teikimas ir perteikimas

The article analyses the process of how an informal information becomes a rumor. It is possible only in a certain situation. It is called rumor situation. It has two main conditions: right place where people can share informal information; and a wish to get additional information about a person, an event or a phenomenon interesting for an individual. Information presentation is conceived as a process of three stages. First stage – pre–interaction stage: a conveyor contacts the talker and clears up his preferences. Second stage – presentation of information (content of rumor). In this stage special attention is paid to: 1) rumors “quality” which influences its acceptability and 2) tactics of rumor information presentation. There are five criteria of rumor quality: Information should be presented as special communication and confidence value; Information should not contradict the objective and obvious heart of the matter; Information should be presented in understandable and popular forrm; Information should raise a wish to find out more details and particularities; Information should be characteristic. On the ground of above-mentioned criteria it is possible to valuate acceptability of rumor to information receiver who sometimes turns to be especially finicky and critical user. In order to clear these obstacles two fold tactics is used. First, criticism towards presented information should be neutralized using active and passive ways of rumor offering. Second, interest of a receiver should be stimulated proportionally and information presented considering a receiver’s psychological type. Third stage – “exit” from a rumor: rumor unlike other forms of communication has no accomplished mechanism because is permanently “renewed”. Usually rumor dies when a person ends it voluntarily. However, it is not simply to end the game of a rumor. All the participants of rumor cycle (conveyor – receiver – conveyor) do not want or, in other words, are afraid to exit first. This disinclination is related to three circumstances. First, with exit he reduces his possibilities to find out more about a person or an event interesting to him, i.e. to satisfy his curiosity. Second, he does not feel safe because he himself may become “the third”, i.e. object of rumors. Third, with exit from the rumor cycle he challenges common everyday communication where a rumor is an integral part. Rejection of such communication may grow into social isolation. That is precisely the thing of an individual fears. It is true to say that a rumor is a particular communicative game and an individual is inveigled into it by society. No wonder all people despite their social position, profession and living place are bigger or smaller rumor conveyors (creators) and receivers. Â

The effects of stock market rumors on stock prices: evidence from an emerging market

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of stock market rumors on the prices of stocks traded at the Istanbul Stock Exchange. The sample consists of 355 favorable rumors mentioned in the HOTS column of ‘ Ekonomik Trend’. While positive significant abnormal returns are observed in each of the 4 days prior to the publication date, negative insignificant abnormal returns are detected in the post-publication period. The findings in the pre-publication period refute the strong form of market efficiency while the findings in the post-publication period suggest that investment decisions based on the published rumors would not benefit investors. A further analysis based on the content of rumor shows that earning expectations’ rumors, and purchases by foreign investors rumors generate greater impact on stock prices than other rumors.