Rumors flourish in vacuum

Modern society needs timely and efficient dissemination of information and law-abiding behavior from people

In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "rumor" is defined as "talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discernable source", or "a statement without known authority for its truth".

That definition aptly sums up the characteristics of rumor: everybody is talking about it without anybody knowing whether it is true.

In their 1947 study, Psychology of Rumor, US psychologists Gordon Allport and Joseph Postman traced the spread of rumors and found that details of information are often distorted or lost, leaving only core information that meets people's preconceived ideas. In simpler words, when the public is interested in an incident but cannot get reliable information on time, rumor in accordance with their imagination appears and is spread.

Rumor has accompanied human society longer than you can imagine. In China, 2,000 years ago, there was already a systemic strategy of targeting rival public figures with rumors; on the other end of the Eurasian land mass, Roman emperors were so tortured by rumors that they sent special inspectors to detect their origin and control public opinion.

The coming of the information age has given rumors more efficient channels to circulate.

A simple click of the mouse can forward an unconfirmed message to thousands, who can share it with many more. Moreover, people participating in such kinds of rumors tend to accept them, instead of giving them a rational second thought.