Study Of Rumor Research Articles

Effacing the Dilemma of the Rumouring Subject: A Value-oriented Approach towards Studying Misinformation on Social Media

Rumour has been part of collective human life for centuries. Communities deal with anxiety and make sense of the unknowable by mixing apprehensions with what is already known to them. With modernity, and in line with studies on a range of social phenomena, there have been efforts to develop a science on rumour. Most of these studies deal with rumour at the propositional level, such that the rumouring or rumour-rebutting subject invariably belongs to one of the two sides of the ‘true–false’ divide. Similar categories are followed in the study of rumour in social media, where the nodes in a rumour chain are, however, less hierarchical, and where images are increasingly used for persuasion. This paper, following a value-oriented approach, argues that the science on rumour has objectivized the problem, and has suggested instrumental solutions like enhancing the digital literacy of social media users. Whereas a value position should ideally attempt to efface the dilemma of the rumouring/rumour-rebutting subject, and locate rumours within the larger socio-political and historical context of a society.

Live organ harvesting in China: Falun Gong and unsettled rumor

The study of rumor is used to examine claims about “live organ harvesting” told by a new religious movement, Falun Gong. The veracity of the rumor is debated and its truth status remains unsettled. I argue that an unsettled rumor told by a marginal community is a problem for the sociology of rumor. This problem is partly resolved by examining how the rumor fits within the culture of its carrier group. An analysis based on ethnographic materials and publications shows how mythic significations evoked by the rumor within Falun Gong influenced how participants communicated to non-Falun Gong audiences. Advocates of the rumor attempted to align its details with deeply held meanings shared within the Falun Gong community. Because non-Falun Gong audiences did not share these mythic associations, such rhetoric made the rumor less plausible to general audiences. How rumor details were represented contributed to public skepticism but has no bearing on the truth status of the underlying rumor. This conclusion has implications not only for evaluating the present rumor but also for the wider study of rumor: evaluating an unsettled rumor told by a marginal group requires a culturally sensitive analysis in order to account for the potentially distorting effects of narration.

A Critical Study of Rumors about the Donghak Peasant War Instigated by Taewon’gun

A Critical Study of Rumors about the Donghak Peasant War Instigated by Taewon’gun

‘They are like crocodiles under water’: rumour in a slum upgrading project in Nairobi, Kenya

This article intends to build a bridge between the anthropological study of rumour and development studies. By analyzing the case study of an upgrading project in Mahali, an (anonymized) informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, the importance of rumour for development in practice is revealed. That importance is two-fold: first of all, it is a tool to fulfil personal interests in the interfactional negotiation over project resources, e.g. land, and the related power struggles. Second, it is a tool of sense-making and expression of agency in the uncertain context of a development project. Current literature notably describes development as a process of assemblage rife with gaps and with a tendency to exclude (local/supralocal) political–economic processes from its plans. In such a context, limited access to reliable information pushes people towards the alternative source of information that is rumour. The article looks into the factors contributing to rumour, specifically residents' experience of past events, interfactional conflicts over power and contextual uncertainty. It also discusses the combined effects of rumour on the slum upgrading intervention. Rumour has a definite effect on power struggles between factions as well as the livelihoods of other, less powerful, residents (for instance through displacement). It decreases the trust residents have in a development project as well as their willingness to invest time and effort in that project. Instead, it instigates conflict and occasionally even violence. However, rumour may also be considered a form of agency of weaker groups faced with a development intervention they do not agree with.

Governing the grapevine: The study of rumor during World War II.

Throughout the early 1940s, a host of rumors relating to the Second World War began to circulate, leading the government to establish various committees and undertake multiple projects intended to counteract rumors that were believed to threaten civilian morale and compromise national security. Simultaneously, social scientists also began taking measures to study and combat rumor. Such efforts included the institution of several community groups, deemed "rumor clinics," that aimed to decrease the prevalence of wartime rumor by educating the general public. This article outlines the rise and fall of rumor clinics, focusing specifically on the shifting boundaries and the mounting tensions between the United States government and social scientists in the study of rumor during World War II.

‘You Didn't Hear it From Us But…’: Towards an Understanding of Rumour and Gossip in Organisations

This paper investigates an important topic in organisational behaviour that hitherto, has not received enough attention—informal communications, including grapevine activity, rumour and gossip. We show how this topic can illuminate potential new insights in a range of related areas in organisational behaviour. We further outline an agenda for research on rumour and gossip in organisations, paying careful attention to a number of individual-level and organisational-level variables. Finally, methodological issues and ways of collecting data are considered; we suggest that many research techniques can be usefully employed in the study of rumour and gossip.

CONSTRUCTION SACRIFICE AND KIDNAPPING RUMOR PANICS IN BORNEO

This paper analyzes the rumor panics about kidnapping that have been reported by Western observers in Borneo for more than ninety years. This analysis, based on the study of rumor in social psychology, identifies this rumor panic phenomenon as a ‘diving rumor’ and relates it to the study of folklore. A diving rumor is one that repeatedly erupts and disappears over a long period of time. It is accounted for by the rumor sharing its dominant motif with a well‐known legend. The analysis of this Bornean kidnapping rumor panic yields a state government construction sacrifice motif. It is argued that the construction sacrifice is a widespread folklore motif and, as folklore, is related to the construction of an ideology of tribal‐state relations. In the context of the sociopolitical stress and cultural conflict marking these relations the rumor panics can be viewed as a sort of ideological warfare. The plausibility of this analysis is supported by an interpretation of the semantics of the rumor. The substantive contents of the rumor are shown to be not only conducive to the construction of an ideology of tribal‐state relations, but also, to be expressive of the principles and practices of traditional intertribal relations which were embodied in headhunting.

Effects of racial stereotypes on eyewitness performance: Implications of the real and the rumoured Allport and Postman studies

AbstractThe Allport and Postman (1945, 1947) study of rumour has been widely cited in support of the claim that expectations based upon racial stereotypes can cause eyewitnesses to make dramatic errors in perceiving or remembering an event. However, this claim is founded on inaccurate accounts of the study that have appeared throughout the eyewitness testimony literature. In this article we explore the implications of the actual Allport and Postman study, and the study as erroneously described, for questions about eyewitness performance.

Cite unseen: Distortions of the Allport and Postman rumor study in the eyewitness testimony literature.

In the psychological literature on eyewitness testimory, the classic Allport and Postman (1945, 1947) study of rumor has consistently been described inaccurately. In the inaccurate accounts both the procedures and implications of the study have been substantially distorted. The erroneous descriptions have found their way into the legal literature, apparently as the results of legal scholars' reliance on the inaccurate secondary reports in the psychological literature. Furthermore, psychologists testifying as experts in court have offered inaccurate accounts of the study in support of contentions about effects of prejudice on eyewitness perception. This note contrasts the actual methods and results of the Allport and Postman study with the descriptions in the eyewitness testimony literature, with the aims of averting future errors concerning the study, and of emphasizing the importance of consulting original sources and reading them carefully.

Human Nature and Collective Behavior: Papers in Honor of Herbert Blumer.

Tamotsu Shibutani is professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Social Processes: An Introduction to Sociology and Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor.

Relationship between Sharpening and Extraversion

During the course of a recent investigation (2) Ss were asked to recall a series of 10 drawings depicting stick engaged in various activities representative of certain of the needs in Murray's system. It was noticed, en passant, that the ways in which Ss described these drawings in their efforts at recall seemed to be related to a personality characteristic which might be termed social extraversion. Those Ss who were lively and sociable in the resting siruation appeared to exaggerate their descriprions of the activities portrayed in the drawings, e.g., in recalling a drawing designed ro represent n Aggression, which was usually described as Two men fighting a duel, such Ss might say, One man running his sword through and killing his opponent. This type of exaggeration in which the activity is expressed in a stronger or more violent form than usual resembles the sharpening found by Allport and Postman (1) in their study of rumor, and we followed their usage in terming such descriptions sharpened. The object of the present experiment was to put this incidental observation to a more exact test by noting the number of sharpened descriptions given to the recalled picrures by a group of 40 Ss drawn from the same population of British undergraduate women, and by subsequently obtaining their extraversion (E) scores from the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) . Ss were classified as if they gave four or more sharpened responses out of the 10 possible, while those who gave none were termed levelers. This procedure led to 12 Ss falling in each of these categories, the remaining 16 Ss with 1, 2, or 3 sharpened responses being termed The extreme sharpeners had a mean E score of 33.1; the average sharpeners, 31.3; and the levelers, 18.9. An analysis of variance gives an F of 20 (p < .05) and t tests run between the three pairs of means reveal that the levelers differ significantly from both groups of sharpeners at p < .001, there being no significant difference between the excreme and average sharpeners. Thus the original observation seems to have been supported: those who gave sharpened descriptions of these pictures in a recall situation were Inore extraverted than those who were unable or unwilling to provide such redundancy. Such a finding needs to be further generalized before any definite rationale can be offered. It is tentatively suggested that the extraverts' tendency to sharpen is an aspect of cheir greater verbal fluency in a test situation (cf. 3).

Mass Communication and The Study of Rumor*

Mass Communication and The Study of Rumor*