While facilitating peoples’ exchange of knowledge, thoughts and ideas, social media provide a perfect hotbed for the speculation of rumors. Political news that easily arouses peoples’ attention and creates dissatisfaction or doubt towards the government, social news that’s closely related to daily lives and thus create a strong vicarious empathy among the crowd, and some health-related topics that focuses on ordinary peoples’ way of health preserving, among all of which exist a tremendous amount of rumors. By making use of various properties of human being, creators of these rumors are turning social network into a place where words are less trustworthy. In this blog I try trivially using some ideas mentioned in the class that are probably related to this situation, so as to investigate the underlying reasons.
Why rumors exist?
1. Will to Misuse Emotions
The government controls every means of media by means of kinds of censorship, while a large group of people are fond of attacking the loopholes. [1] The more the government wants to “hide” from the audience, the more likely these people will fight back. However this positive will of claiming freedom is misused by some anti-social, anti-government entities who don’t want peace but chaos for the society. Falsely coined accuses against government officers and police, fake appeals for morality through malicious setting of stories, and other rich, emotional storytelling can easily arouse people’s pity and attention. Being true or not is no longer the key focus of the public.
2. Misinterpretations
Certain rumors are just due to the contorting nature of word passing. Second handed information, segments of the original messages and reinterpretations are all key factors to misinterpretations. While the writers might not be intentionally malicious, different parties could make use of the distorted words and spread them randomly.
3. Low cost
The cost of coining a piece rumor is close to zero, and the avalanche effect that will be brought along far exceeds the cost.
Why
rumors spread?
1. Lack of Responsibility
Social network is somehow similar to real life social groups, except that it relieves people from some compulsory duties when a person becomes an anonymous entity. Deindividuation appears when entities take no responsibilities during passing along fake news, when they might act more hostile or less careful compared with their normal status.
2. Humans’ “Better Safe Than Sorry” Nature
Some people can spread news even though they are just partially convinced, driven by the “better safe than sorry” thinking. Examples can be donation-raising, volunteer help for countryside children, or simply a union of power to fight against some certain party.
3. Power of Models
Certain figures serve as role models among the whole society, so if that group of people spread news without careful investigation, a large group of people can join alongside, by mistake.
4. Lower cognitive level
The fast pace of society and the overwhelming amount of information stops people from thinking deeply and thoroughly, with their limited time. Less time leads to a lower level of cognitive thinking. Without processing the information, people are prone to believing instead of doubting.
5. Herd Behavior
People’s nature of following crowds and believing in common beliefs eases the spread of rumors. The more a piece of news is re-twitted, the larger the increase rate is in terms of its propagation in time and space, until it reaches a threshold. [2]
6. High cost to clarify facts
While it takes almost nothing to create a rumor, it takes time and labor to clarify the truth. Compared with appalling rumors, truths always seem more tedious, which will stop people from spreading them and buying them. Human’s tendency to stay in the same place also stops them from believing an absolute opposite point of view.
Conclustion: There are way too many reasons behind this issue, so i can just pinpoint a tiny portion of them, which already seems a bit messy and boring=((((. If it's possible, could you also randomly drop some bomb? =) And welcome to leave any comment you like.
References:
[1] H. Gao, Rumor, Lies, and Weibo: How Social Media is Changing the Nature of Truth in China, The Atlantic [Online]. Available:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/rumor-lies-and-weibo-how-social-media-is-changing-the-nature-of-truth-in-china/255916/
[2] B. Doerr, M. Fouz, T. Friedrich, Why Rumors Spread Fast in Social Network, Communications of the ACM, 2012 Available:
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~tfried/paper/2012CACM.pdf
I agree with your third opinion in "Why rumors exist?".Because of the low cost of rumor, the rumor cannot be controlled and be cut down.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if the government or Internet can use some policies to prevent new rumor generating,we will have a better environment.
Exactly you hit the point. Due to wide adoption of Internet, the expansion of rumor is almost unpractical to handle, so we have to start from little steps. Just like Weibo, which has adopted some sort of verification scheme, rumors would be tagged out. But that's just a start. Let's see what can be done. =)
DeleteYour post is very interesting. It's true that the Internet gives the rumor a better opportunity to spread wider and faster. People can use PS or some other tools to make a fake picture. Even the video can also be man made. In my view, the key to solve this problem is building a responsibility system. I know it's very hard for sometimes 100 people retell a same thing can have 100 versions. However, on the contrary, we can get more truths through the Internet. Everyone can use his smartphone recording some significative moment.
ReplyDeleteYes! The challenge is to tell truths from rumors, especially when we know the existence of both. It does require a careful verification attitude and some profound schemes.
DeleteHey, we wrote the same topic! I think rumor is rather an interesting topic as it is human nature, as well as involving many studies such as human behavior and psychology. There are many aspects of the topic to describe and I'm glad to see more viewpoints here.
ReplyDeleteMost rumors can be found on such SNS platforms like Weibo or Twitter, because these platforms are of directed model which was talked in recently lectures. Unlike Facebook or Renren where information are mostly shared undirectely among real world friends, Weibo users can broadcast their thoughts to all other who focus on you, no matter who they are. By this the power of spreading rumors on Weibo is much stronger than Renren. I think that is why government called these directed SNS operators to use real-name registeration to restrict unhealthy rumors.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the social networking is the culprit of spreading rumors.
ReplyDeleteIn our society, social networking plays a critical role to spread the information. And naturally, some of the information is true and some of the information is just a rumor. And often we will see various opinions about the same case. So at this time, we must keep the critical thinking to consider and choose the correct ones and have our own opinions instead of believing in others blindly.
And I think you article about why rumors spread is interesting and useful. Thank you very much.
Although the Social Networking is the media for spread rumors, but it's also an effective tool to broadcast news that could eventually make big change to the world.
ReplyDelete