How Idle is Idle Talk? One Hundred Years of Rumor Research
- 1 February 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Diogenes
- Vol. 54 (1), 59-82
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192107073434
Abstract
This paper examines the stability of the concept of rumor in the past century. It is suggested that not only do models of explanation change, but rumors themselves also change - not only in content, but perhaps in the way they are believed or disbelieved. Social scientific interest in rumors begins with the birth of modern psychology in the 19th century, shifts to social psychology and sociology in mid-20th century, prompted by governmental concern over subversion through rumor during the Second World War, and is finally revived by folklorists in more recent decades. A central assumption emerged that ambiguous situations create a vacuum which rumor fills. By the late 1960s, despite a decline in social scientific interest in the topic, a handful of significant empirical and theoretical challenges emerge from scattered studies. The discipline of folklore begins to take more interest in contemporary rumor in the 1970s, and by the early 1990s the rubric of the rumor is almost entirely supplanted in English language scholarship by the ‘urban legend’. It is argued that particular attention can and should be paid, in contemporary analysis, to the general information environment, the politics of belief, and cultural shifts in ideas about truth and falsity.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Crime legends in a new mediumTheoretical Criminology, 2002
- When social psychology became less social: Prasad and the history of rumor researchAsian Journal of Social Psychology, 2002
- A Mass Poisoning Rumor in EuropePublic Opinion Quarterly, 1989
- Reflections on the Information Overload Paradigm in Consumer Decision MakingJournal of Consumer Research, 1984
- Who Hears What from Whom and with What EffectPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1980
- The Curious Case of the "Death" of Paul McCartneyUrban Life and Culture, 1972
- The basic law of rumor.The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1953
- Rumor and Public OpinionAmerican Journal of Sociology, 1951
- Wartime rumors of waste and special privilege: why some people believe them.The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1945
- A Psychology of RumorPublic Opinion Quarterly, 1944