Rumors: What Are They And What Dangers Do They Contain?
The rumor, gossip, that which makes the river sound that it is not water, but that many times it runs more skillfully than the liquid element. We have all heard rumors and also spread some. In more conservative times they have made entire families tremble, while today they circulate in a different way because the way we share information has also changed, and a lot.
The fact is that, if the rumor stands out for something, it is because of its enormous potential to generate imbalances, whether social or personal. On the other hand, we do not usually enjoy when we are part of one, since normally they are not loaded with good intentions : hence they are somehow veiled messages.
Rumors, what are they?
Usually they are messages that follow the minstrel tradition of going by word of mouth (nowadays we would say rather from message to message). The paradox of the rumor is that it is not supported by evidence, but it gains in veracity as more people share it. These types of messages perfectly follow the law of “repeat a message many times, make many people believe it and it will end up being true.”
The source or the initial focus of rumors is not usually easy to identify, especially because the message, when repeated, is transformed, so that the rumor that reaches the 100th person on many occasions does not resemble kabbalah or elucubration which started out as. On the other hand, at the beginning it is usually a brief and concise message about which a certain suspicion of uncertainty is recognized. “I have heard that there are going to be layoffs”, “Ana is on leave and last week she was very sad, she may be depressed”.
However, our brains prefer certainties over hypotheses. Thus, what at first began as a hypothesis ends up becoming almost a dogma. To complete the definition of rumor, we could say that it responds to very clear laws:
- The law of secrecy : the source is unknown. On the other hand, there is a proven phenomenon and that is that human beings tend to forget the source of a message before its content.
- The law of the unquestionable, a rumor is hardly questioned simply because of the cognitive effort it would take to do so. On the other hand, nobody likes to doubt a person who assures us that the information they transmit is true.
- The law of curiosity, rumor enhances curiosity, either because it involves us in some way or because the subject it refers to has a rugged point.
- The law of speed, its ability to propagate and reproduce makes it unstoppable.
- The law of proximity is transmitted between knots of social relations.
- Law of the mutable, it acts like a tree, new rumors often arise from it, created to fill in the gaps left by the initial rumor.
Another property of rumors is that they are usually viral. That is to say, each receiver is at the same time a potential sender of the information, to which on many occasions they will add their opinion about it, not being strange that the way and the tone in which the rumor is shared is mediated by it.
How to eliminate rumors?
The answer is as simple as it is impossible: by preventing people from communicating. A more realistic answer is just as difficult, though less so. It would be an exercise in criticism of the information we receive. Asking ourselves if the source that tells us about it is reliable, asking (if possible) the source itself to what extent it trusts the information it has given us, it would also be good to know if the circulation of that information benefits someone and to what extent that someone is involved in spreading the rumor.
On the other hand, if there are rumors with which we have to be careful, it is with those that allude to minorities or groups with little capacity to defend themselves, and there is a phrase that says that “the story is always told by the winners and that the The first payment for the defeat, on the part of the defeated, is precisely to accept this story ”. An example of this can be found in any of the dictatorships that devastated Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Without having to make such a trip back in time, and staying in the present day, looking at the minorities that surround us, we will realize that many of the stereotypes that prevail in the collective imagination are systematically fed by rumors, which in turn They also nurture prejudices and ultimately lead to discrimination.
