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34-459: Rumors (or rumours ) are pieces of purportedly true information that circulate without substantiating evidence. rumors , or rumours may also refer to: Rumors A rumor ( American English ), or rumour ( British English ; see spelling differences ; derived from Latin rumorem 'noise'), is "a tall tale of explanations of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern." In

68-499: A community or region). 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 term 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

102-422: 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

136-420: A rumor was introduced for discussion, information was volunteered and discussed, and finally a resolution was drawn or interest was lost. 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

170-438: A rumor's diffusion. The Internet's recent appearance as a new media technology 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 style of deliberately chosen rumors for political purposes in particular circumstances (even though significant attention to

204-654: A subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious. In 1896, in Letter 52, Freud introduced the stratification of mental processes, noting that memory-traces are occasionally re-arranged in accordance with new circumstances. In this theory, he differentiated between Wahrnehmungszeichen ("Indication of perception"), Unbewusstsein ("the unconscious") and Vorbewusstsein ("the Preconscious "). From this point forward, Freud no longer used

238-461: 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

272-541: Is employed to say something 'Freudian', it is proof that the writer has not read [their] Freud". Carl Jung said that since there is a limit to what can be held in conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one's knowledge and prior experience is needed. The idea of the subconscious as a powerful or potent agency has allowed the term to become prominent in New Age and self-help literature, in which investigating or controlling its supposed knowledge or power

306-476: Is needed, which they label the subconscious. Sigmund Freud used the term "subconscious" in 1893 to describe associations and impulses that are not accessible to consciousness. He later abandoned the term in favor of unconscious, noting the following: If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness,

340-478: Is proven to be true. That is why people say to never trust the tabloids. Rumor has always played a major role in politics, with negative rumors about an opponent typically more effective than positive rumors about one's own side. " Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through

374-479: Is seen as advantageous. In the New Age community, techniques such as autosuggestion and affirmations are believed to harness the power of the subconscious to influence a person's life and real-world outcomes, even curing sickness. Skeptical Inquirer magazine criticized the lack of falsifiability and testability of these claims. Physicist Ali Alousi, for instance, criticized it as unmeasurable and questioned

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408-448: Is the emphasis on transmission (word of mouth, which then was heard and reported in the newspaper); on content ("topical" means that it can somehow be distinguished from trivial 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 social terms). Based on his study of

442-409: Is usually concerned with governments, militaries and Non-Governmental Organizations ( NGOs ). Adroit strategic communication requires an understanding of stories, trends and memes circulating within a culture. Rumors can be viewed as stories that seem rational but that are steeped into speculation, in connection with a certain narrative landscape (the vast array of cultural expression circulating within

476-622: The Boston Herald ' s " Rumor Clinic " Column. He defines rumor as a proposition for belief of topical reference 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. Knapp identified three basic characteristics that apply to rumor: Crucial to this definition and its characteristics

510-414: The social sciences , a rumor involves a form of a statement whose veracity is not quickly 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. Rumors are also often discussed with regard to misinformation and disinformation (the former often seen as simply false and

544-629: The French subconscient as coined by John Norris, in "An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World” (1708): "The immediate objects of Sense, are not the objects of Intellection, they being of a Subconscient [subconscious] nature." A more recent use was in 1889 by the psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947), in his doctorate of letters thesis, Of Psychological Automatism ( French : De l'Automatisme Psychologique . Janet argued that underneath

578-498: The controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct 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 research on rumor came from psychological approaches (as

612-405: The damage to personal reputations. Similar to their appearance and function in political communication, wherein rumors can be deployed for specific deleterious effect (rumor bomb) or can otherwise plague a candidate for office, rumors also play an important role in strategic communication . Strategic communication is the process of crafting messages in support of specific organizational goals, and

646-604: The discussion of Allport and DiFonzio demonstrates above). The focus was especially 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 as old 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

680-458: The efforts of communication, civil affairs or outreach campaigns such as those undertaken by governments in crisis response situations or militaries in insurgencies. As Bernardi notes, "Like their explosive cousins, rumors can be created and planted by nearly anybody, require limited resources to utilize, can be deadly for those in its direct path, and can instil fear". Subconscious The word subconscious represents an anglicized version of

714-495: The following: prudent , apprehensive , authenticating , interrogatory , providing information , belief , disbelief , sense-making , digressive , or un-codable . Each rumor discussion was then analysed 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. There are four components of managing rumors that both of you need to understand for

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748-514: The latter seen as deliberately false, though usually from a government source given to the media or a foreign government). French and German social science research on rumor locates the modern scholarly definition of it to the pioneering work of the German William Stern in 1902. Stern experimented on rumor involving a "chain of subjects" who passed a story from "mouth to ear" without the right to repeat or explain it. He found that

782-410: The layers of critical-thought functions of the conscious mind lay a powerful awareness that he called the subconscious mind. In the strict psychological sense, the adjective is defined as "operating or existing outside of consciousness ". Locke and Kristof write that there is a limit to what can be held in conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one's knowledge and prior experience

816-493: The likelihood that thoughts can affect anything outside the head. In addition, critics have asserted that the evidence provided is usually anecdotal and that, because of the self-selecting nature of the positive reports , as well as the subjective nature of any results, these reports are susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias . Psychologists and psychiatrists use the term "unconscious" in traditional practices, where metaphysical and New Age literature, often use

850-473: The newspaper column, Knapp divided those rumors into three types: Knapp also found that negative rumors were more likely to be disseminated than positive rumors. These types also differentiate between positive (pipe dream) and negative (bogie and wedge-driving) rumors. 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." This conclusion

884-421: The power of rumor for mass-media-diffused war propaganda has been in vogue since World War I; see Lasswell 1927). In the early part of the 21st century, 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 problem are from a legal scholarly perspective, largely having to do with libel and privacy laws and

918-426: The sake of your relationship's success. The first, anxiety (situational and personality) , is when people who either have a more anxious personality, or people who are in an anxiety- lifting situation are more likely to create rumors in order to relieve some of their insecurities. The second component of managing rumors is ambiguity . Ambiguity is when someone is not sure about what is going on, so they end up assuming

952-412: The story was shortened and changed by the time it reached the end of the chain. His student was another pioneer in the field, Gordon Allport . The experiment is similar to the children's game Chinese whispers . "A Psychology of Rumor" was published by Robert H. Knapp  [ fr ] in 1944, in which he reports on his analysis of over one thousand rumors during World War II that were printed in

986-403: The term "subconscious" because, in his opinion, it failed to differentiate whether content and the processing occurred in the unconscious or preconscious mind. Charles Rycroft explains that the subconscious is a term "never used in psychoanalytic writings". Peter Gay says that the use of the term subconscious where unconscious is meant is "a common and telling mistake"; indeed, "when [the term]

1020-417: The term subconscious. It should not, however, be inferred that the concept of the unconscious and the New Age concept of the subconscious are precisely equivalent, even though they both warrant consideration of mental processes of the brain. Psychologists and psychiatrists take a much more limited view of the capabilities of the unconscious than are represented by New Age depiction of the subconscious. There are

1054-402: The worst. The third component is information importance . . Information is key, and if that information is not juicy or if it does not interest people, there won't be rumors, but information can often be false. Information can also be ambiguous. The last component of managing rumors is credibility. Rumors are often spread by sources that are not credible. A rumor itself is not credible unless it

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1088-406: 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

1122-585: Was clearly carrying boxes marked "TNT (102)." 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." This conclusion was based on an analysis of archived message board discussions in which the statements were coded and analysed. It

1156-422: 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." 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

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