As you can imagine, some of these categories have lost much of their shock value and therefore no longer assess as much damage – if at all, as before. And what qualifies in each category has also changed over time. Some old standbies are now non-existent or almost like that (call someone a leper these days and people can stand further away from you than they will run away from your accused.) Some subcategories have simply become non-subjects (or are in the process of becoming so): style of dress, homosexuality, church attendance, etc. The particularities that still apply to each law vary from state to state and country to country. A common point in most jurisdictions is that truth is an absolute defense at least against slander or slander, but even truth has a slippery side (e.g. the legal scope of private facts made public). Briefly identified three basic characteristics that apply to rumors: How about continuing rumors that you know to be false? Again, it depends. The courts may find that inaction is synonymous with action, but the standards tend to differ. What is your motivation for not clearing up the rumor? Will you benefit significantly from the loss of someone else? Are you legally prevented from saying what you know by contractual or court-ordered censorship? There could be social treatment or commercial gain that would allow you to hold your tongue, but be careful as this inaction will also have consequences. So, should you satisfy the endless hunger of the rumor mill? According to rumors, it is. That depends. A rumor is previously unfounded information – about, usually juicy, shared in some way about something or someone that has the potential to influence the receiving public`s opinion on the topic of the rumor.
Knapp also found that negative rumors were more likely to be spread than positive rumors. These types also distinguish between positive (chimera) and negative (bogie and wedge) rumors. Often the beginning of a rumor is small, maybe even “anonymous” (but not really – someone told someone). But as soon as a juicy bite is tasted by the public, it spreads like wildfire. If you haven`t started the rumor, what`s wrong with repeating it? As you`d expect, if you`re a frequent reader of these columns, it depends. First, there is a legal category designed for such a circumstance with its own implications. The repetition of a rumor is legally called a republication, and the repeater could be held to the same standards as the person who originally created the rumor. For the study, archived discussions about rumors on the Internet and other computer networks such as BITnet were retrieved. Typically, at least five statements were issued in each discussion over a period of at least two days. The statements were then coded as follows: cautious, concerned, authenticating, questioning, providing information, belief, disbelief, meaning-creating, digressive or non-codable. Each rumor discussion was then analyzed using this coding system. A similar coding system based on statistical analysis was applied to each discussion as a whole, and the aforementioned four-step rumor discussion model emerged.
A rumor (American English) or rumor (British English; see spelling differences; derived from Latin: “rumorm” – noise) is “a large story of explanations of events flowing from person to person and relating to an object, event, or matter of public interest.” (1) If they are so problematic, why do people keep spreading rumors? Simply put, it is human nature to be fascinated by stories about others, especially seductive and somewhat illegal stories. The rumor business is big business because of the apparent power that the merchant could wield. Reputation is the name of the rumor game and our industry builds a lot on that. You can build a reputation if you seem to know what`s going on. You can control a reputation (for better or worse) to change the situation of the country. And the worst reason of all, but, the one you rely on the most, rumors are easier to find than facts. A rumor bomb can be considered as some characteristics of these general concepts, but rumor bombs occur under very specific cultural and historical conditions. These are not interpersonal rumors that interest many rumors. They begin in a relationship between conscious “disinformants” and the media, whether it`s TV news, talk shows, newspapers, radio, or websites. They then circulate in these media, which maybe, but not necessarily, leads to interpersonal word-of-mouth rumors. [15] [16] We can distinguish rumours from facts. The facts are checked, whole cores of information.
Rumors are almost always incomplete and always unconfirmed conjecture trying to fill in the gaps in the factual area. The rumors are “heard”, the facts are proven. Facts are usually boring and frozen. The rumors are mostly salacious. At least the “good” ones are. For re-editing, one of the important factors involved in dealing with the infringement is the effort the republisher made to verify what they heard. If you believe a rumor and make no effort to verify the veracity of what is rumor, then you are often in the same shoes as the author of a rumor. In addition, Harsin locates the “rumor bomb” in other kinds of communication such as disinformation (deliberate disinformation) and propaganda, as rumors have been seen by others. However, he also distinguishes it from these concepts because disinformation is often too closely associated with government and propaganda is an attempt to control opinion without regard for ethics and accuracy of statements. Similarly, the term “spin” is an umbrella term for strategic political communication that attempts to formulate or reformulate an event or statement in a way that is politically profitable to one party and harmful to the other, although at its core it may simply be a decoy (Bennett 2003, 130).
[14] Then there are also those clauses that limit what you can say – rumor or not. With confidentiality clauses and non-disclosure agreements, the parties try to preserve their own secrets (and sometimes yours). These clauses specify certain types of information that cannot be shared or published. They must be strictly adhered to by signatories (which is easier if they are drafted clearly and correctly, which is not always the case) and can cause significant legal problems if they are not. It`s best to leave this information or speculation about it out of your rumor mill if it can be avoided. The recent emergence of the Internet as a new media technology has always revealed new possibilities for the rapid spread of rumors, as evidenced by debunking sites such as snopes.com, urbanlegend.com and factcheck.org. Previous research had also failed to take into account the particular form or style of rumors deliberately selected for political purposes in certain circumstances (although since World War I considerable attention has been paid to the power of rumours for mass media propaganda; see Lasswell 1927). [9] In the early 21st century, some jurists dealt with the political uses of rumours, although their conceptualization remains socio-psychological and their solutions are a public problem from a jurisprudential perspective, largely related to defamation and privacy laws and damage to personal reputation. [10] From blogs to Facebook posts, from Twitter to text messages, a lot of information is circulating these days, coming from more sources than ever before – not all of it is reliable. And a lot of stories spread incredibly fast (they don`t call it “viral” technology for nothing). Therefore, it is important to understand when gossip and diatribes can cross the legal line and become “defamation,” the legal word for a statement that damages a person`s reputation.
Since rumours tarnish the reputation of their targets, the area of law most often invoked for protection is that of defamation. Since my previous column on this area of law highlights the details and nuances, I will not go into the details. Let`s assume that rumors may fall under defamation or slander (or their variations of close relationships) and that the status of a public/private figure often comes into play in this industry. The key factor is the truth value of the rumor. First of all, what counts as rumor? Here is my non-legal definition: In the social sciences, a rumor implies a form of statement whose veracity is not quickly or never confirmed. In addition, some scholars have identified rumors as a subset of propaganda. Sociology, psychology and communication sciences have very different definitions of rumours. [2] Middle English rumor, from Anglo-French, from Latin rumor Cree, gossip; Similar to the Old English rÄon to deplore, Sanskrit rauti he roars Based on his study of the newspaper column, Knapp divided these rumors into three types: Rumors can be seen as stories that seem rational but are entangled in speculation, tied to a particular narrative landscape (the multitude of cultural expressions circulating within a community or region). [20] Dans ihrem Buch Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism and the Struggle for Strategic Influence haben die Co-Autoren Daniel Bernardi, Pauline Hope Cheong, Chris Lundry und Scott W.