Rumor

Effect of source honesty and appropriateness on effectiveness of rumor denial was tested. When the source was perceived as high on honesty, the denial was more successful in reducing belief and anxiety associated with the rumor. Source appropriateness (operationalized as a combination of source knowledgeability and status) did not have a main effect on belief or anxiety reduction. Honesty and appropriateness had an additive effect, such that the denial was most successful in reducing belief when the source was perceived as high on both honesty and appropriateness.

En 555 avant J.-C., Pisistrate prend le pouvoir à Athènes grâce à une fausse rumeur assurant qu’Athéna le ramène en char dans sa cité. La sotte naïveté des Athéniens devant le stratagème du tyran ouvre des pistes de réflexion utiles pour éclairer le rapport des Grecs à la rumeur et à l’opinion. Soumise à trois niveaux de lecture, l’anecdote rapportée par Hérodote, I, 60-61 montre combien le phénomène rumoral ancien a partie liée avec le vraisemblable (eikos). Replongée dans son contexte archaïque, la réaction des Athéniens permet de comprendre comment Pisistrate agit en maître du vraisemblable afin de passer pour un Maître de vérité aux yeux de ses contemporains. Envisagée dans son présent de production, la remarque d’Hérodote à l’égard des Athéniens introduit au débat consacré à la véracité des traditions orales qui agite les Grecs à l’époque classique : aux premières enquêtes d’Hérodote et de Thucydide qui soumettent les rumeurs à leur sagacité critique s’oppose la réhabilitation des on-dit comme source de connaissance entreprise par Isocrate, Eschine ou Aristote. Replacée dans les structures annulaires de L’Enquête, l’anecdote montre enfin comment Hérodote met la rumeur de Pisistrate au service d’une démonstration morale qui utilise, elle aussi, le vraisemblable pour donner à penser l’histoire de la démocratie impérialiste athénienne.

L’article porte sur une rumeur, apparue au Nigeria en 2004 et largement diffusée en Afrique et en Asie, selon laquelle certains numéros de téléphone portable provoqueraient la mort subite de ceux qui répondent à l’appel. Après avoir retracé la diffusion internationale de la rumeur, l’article montre que cette histoire de numéros tueurs exploite une inquiétude inhérente à la communication téléphonique : la menace des appels anonymes. Alors que les numéros tueurs font leur apparition en Afrique comme une forme inédite de sorcellerie, en Asie, cette version sorcellaire cède la place à une nouvelle variante : un virus téléphonique serait à l’origine du phénomène. L’article propose en définitive une épidémiologie culturelle de la rumeur attentive aux circonstances locales qui permettent de rendre compte de ses variantes régionales, mais aussi aux facteurs plus généraux qui expliquent sa diffusion et sa stabilité relative à l’échelle internationale.

Se aborda el entramado de relaciones sociales en el que tiene lugar el asesinato de Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, candidato del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) en los comicios que para elegir presidente de México se realizan en 1994. Se identifican algunos rasgos clínicos comunes entre el magnicidio y otros crimenes cometidos en contra de personajes de la vida pública, lo que permite establecer elementos de locura compartida en el caso estudiado, a partir de la analogía estructural entre delirio y teorías de la conspiración que circulan bajo la forma del rumor, mostrando el carácter compartido de toda la locura. La locura como una modalidad de lazo social encuentra en la crisis termial del régimen de partido de Estado las circunstancias que en este caso la ligan al entorno político y social en el que tiene lugar.

網路科技發展至今，社群網站的出現大大連結了人們之間的生活，人們藉此找到共同的話題、並將資訊互相交流傳播，產生出如北非茉莉花革命、台灣太陽花運動等等對社會產生重大的影響的事件，但在這之中強大的資訊傳播能力也成為恐怖組織的工具，伊斯蘭國的興起將血腥暴力的內容做為其宣傳、恐嚇的工具，在這其中，我們必須要思考社群網站與恐怖主義所可能帶來的風險，並試圖減少可能產生的負面影響與傷害。
本研究嘗試就社群網站、恐怖組織的應用進行分析，蒐集國內外相關理論、新聞、案例來進行討論，從社群網站的影響、恐怖組織的應用、未來可能出現的謠言危機等面向進行討論，並就其發生過的案例進行分析，並就其嘗試就其危機管理的應用討論，並就其方式提出可能的解決方案。
本研究指出「資訊的速度與廣度影響事件發展程度」、「媒體是具有擴大傳播效果與製造危機的雙面刃」、「資訊使用成為恐怖組織的槓桿武器」等三項結論，在恐怖組織已經熟悉社群網站操作的狀況下，國安單位仍需持續觀察、找出弱點與可行的先制、危機管理措施，如此才可以將危機傷害降至最低。

The appearance of social websites has connected people's life greatly. People communicate each other, lead the deep impact to society such as 2011 Arab Spring in north Africa and 2014 Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan. But these power of communication also become the tool of terrorist groups, the rise of Islamic State uses the violence content as it's tool for propaganda and threaten.
In this study, we have to consider the risk of combining of social websites and terrorism, and find the way to reduce it's damage and negative effects.
This study attempts to analysis the using of combination with social websites and terrorism through collects theories, news and cases to discuss it's effects, utilization and risk. Finally suggest the way to reduce negative effects through the way of crisis management.
In conclusion, this research presents three findings: first, the speed and proliferation of information affects the degree of incident. Second, the ability to spreading widely or creating crisis turns media into a double-edged sword. Third, the utilization of information becomes the terrorist group's weapon of power leverage.
In the circumstances that terrorist groups know very well than governments and the security units still have to research the utilization of terrorist and it's weakness, find the pre-emptive way to stop or the measure of crisis management that to the minimum risk.

The problem of identifying rumors is of practical
importance especially in online social networks, since information can diffuse more rapidly and widely than the offline counterpart. In this paper, we identify characteristics of rumors by examining the following three aspects of diffusion: temporal,
structural, and linguistic. For the temporal characteristics, we
propose a new periodic time series model that considers daily
and external shock cycles, where the model demonstrates that rumor likely have fluctuations over time. We also identify key structural and linguistic differences in the spread of rumors and non-rumors. Our selected features classify rumors with high precision and recall in the range of 87% to 92%, that is higher than other states of the arts on rumor classification.

Before the ghetto in Warsaw was closed in November 1940, Jews for over a year had lived in the occupied city and heard gossips of the possible creation of the ghetto. The main goal of the article is to analyze such news and rumors.
            The paper contains a timeline of the actions that German authorities took in order to create a ghetto and their changing plans in that regard. I have also shown prevailing social and psychological responses to rumors and patterns of reaction. I have focused on the Jewish perspective, but I have also shown that for Poles rumors of the ghetto triggered the process of imagining the city ‘without Jews’ and envisioning the possible consequences of such fact for Polish inhabitants of the city. Separate section of the paper is devoted to interactions Poles and Jews had in regard to the exchange of apartments before sealing off of the ghetto.
I have also explained the role of the news of the possible creation of the ghetto play in the psychological and social isolation of the Jews of Warsaw during the first year of the war.

Hoy es prácticamente imposible disociar la velocidad de los rumores de la actitud que adopta el periodismo frente a ellos. Los medios de comunicación masivos multiplican considerablemente los receptores del rumor, pero también se nutren de éste para dar paso a nuevas formas de entender el ejercicio profesional.
A la luz de lo que ocurrió con la explosión de los media en el Siglo XX y la importancia que revistió la cobertura periodística en el desarrollo de las guerras y otros conflictos recientes, no debe entenderse a este matrimonio como un simple binomio comunicativo, donde lo trascendental es solamente ese efecto multiplicador de receptores. Hablamos de un mecanismo superador del circuito de comunicación en sí mismo, de un fenómeno que ha trascendido la estructura de los medios y cimentado nuevos formatos y géneros. De allí, quizás, que el periodismo adopte la misma actitud frente a su presencia: no tiene que escaparse, hay que darle cobertura.
En este trabajo se presentará un dispositivo metodológico cuyo fin es investigar cuantitativa y cualitativamente la significación que se le otorga al rumor en la prensa escrita. Se exhibirán además algunos resultados del análisis realizado a una publicación periodística de la ciudad de San Luis.

From the early 1430's, and during the course of the century that followed, Jewish society was rife with tales and reports of the rediscovery of the ten tribes. Rumor had it that the courageous and invincible tribesmen had departed their exilic abode of the previous 2100 years, engaging and conquering their neighbors and adversaries, and were now poised to assume a significant political and military role in the international arena. Since the tribesmen's ultimate objective was the reestablishment of an independent Jewish kingdom in the Land of Israel, these rumors assumed messianic significance. It was further claimed that high ranking political forces in Europe and the Islamic world were aware of this process while attempting to contend with it and that portents observed in various places established and corroborated these reports. These rumors surfaced in an intensive correspondence comprising 30 letters from the 1402 to the 1532, exchanged between Italy and the Land of Israel and also circulated within Italy and dispatched to additional countries, dealing with various reports and rumors of the impending redemption
Based on an analysis of these letters I argue that the Jewish expectations for a redemption led by the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were influenced by European hopes that Prester John would come to their help to eradicate the Ottoman-Islamic threat. These hopes flourished in Italy from the 1430's on due to the political convergence between Italy and Ethiopia, perceived as the land of Prester John, at that time.
I also indicate a shift in the image of the ten tribes, from an image, common between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, of religious piety and complete detachment from what was happening outside their world, to a belligerent military image. This new image is explicitly expressed in the rumors, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that the tribes are on their way to become, once more, an active political and martial factor in the world history.
The new militant image, I claim, stems from a Jewish reading of the German anti-Semite traditions of the "Red Jews". According to these traditions the Ten Tribes are wild and fierce warriors and barbarian cannibals. They were prisoned in a remote and isolated place because they endanger the mere existence of the civilized (Christian) world. The Christian traditions of Prester John and the Red Jews, when read through Jewish eyes, have become a source for consolation and messianic hope.
Sixteenth century Jewish messianism was a historical messianism. It was affected by the international and geo-political situation, and envisioned as the rise of a political and martial Jewish power (the ten tribes) as a new and significant player in world politics.

Seventy-four experienced public relations professionals serving top global corporations were surveyed to investigate types of organizational rumors, their prevalence and effects, effectiveness of rumor management strategies, and associated psychological and situational variables. Results showed that harmful rumors are commonplace, especially during organizational change. The majority of rumors were internal in nature and were most likely to be about personnel changes, job security, or job satisfaction. External rumors were most likely to consist of hearsay of concern to the general public, such as those rumors affecting the organization’s reputation and those about product/service quality. Rumors incited a variety of effects, most of which were rated as somewhat severe. Three distinct dimensions of rumor effects emerged: external ramifications (e.g., bad press), internal attitudes (e.g., lowered morale), and internal behaviors (e.g., increased absenteeism).Numerous strategies were rated as highly effective in preventing and neutralizing harmful rumors. Two broad approaches, composed of strategies that structured (i.e., gave boundaries to) uncertainty and strategies that focused on enhancing the efficacy of official comments, emerged. Implications for PR professionals are discussed and include anticipating rumors as the norm, monitoring effects in three different dimensions, and proactively creating two-pronged rumor prevention and management action plans that structure uncertainty and enhance formal communications.Nicholas DiFonzo, Ph.D., is assistant professor of Psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY (nxdgss@rit.edu); Prashant Bordia, Ph.D., is lecturer at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Drawing on social histories of rumour, this article challenges notions of white and Afrikaner homogeneity which persist in the scholarship on late and post-apartheid South Africa. In so doing, it demonstrates the revisionist potential of rumour as a historical source, while reinserting class in a scholarship which privileges race as salient historical feature. The article focuses on Arrie Paulus, apartheid South Africa’s most prominent white trade unionist, infamous as the personification of working-class racism. Yet this defender of race-based privilege and staunch Afrikaner nationalist was haunted by a rumour: Paulus, it was
whispered, was not actually white. The rumour circulated in reform-era South Africa and persists in the post-apartheid present. By examining the rumour surrounding Paulus’s racial and ethnic origins in terms of the functions it fulfilled within the particular contexts in which it appeared, this article exposes longstanding tensions around the politics of class characterizing Afrikaner society since the 1970s.

Rumour is a form of unofficial communication that is distinct from other such forms: Unlike gossip, rumour can never be first-hand (even if gossip can give rise to rumour), and unlike urban legends, rumours are not intrinsically unreliable. The first section of the chapter (‘What is rumour?’) pursues these definitional issues and sets out a rough definition of rumour which will subsequently be refined further. Most epistemological discussions of rumour rightly emphasize that the general factors that determine the trustworthiness of rumour – the circumstances of its production and the antecedent plausibility of the asserted claim – are essentially the same as are involved in accepting or rejecting testimony in general. What is distinctive about rumour are its mode of circulation and, potentially, its social function (e.g. of reducing ambiguity). Sections 2 (‘How rumours emerge’) and 3 (‘Rumour transmission’) therefore summarize theories of how rumours come into existence and how repeated transmission gives rise to the circulation of rumours in society. Section 4 (‘How reliable are rumours?’) discusses both empirical studies of the reliability of rumours and epistemological frameworks that seek to explain why rumours may be more reliable than philosophers have traditionally acknowledged. Section 5 ('Rumour and epistemic dependence') goes beyond the question of reliability by acknowledging rumour as a form of epistemic dependence that is intimately connected to the reliability with which the epistemic environment furnishes an epistemic subject with timely and relevant information. Issues of social and public trust are, therefore, essential to an adequate assessment of rumour as an epistemic phenomenon. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ethical and political challenges in connection with rumour (Section 6, 'The ethics and politics of rumour').

It has long been established that the famous phrase “S’ils n’ont plus de pain, qu’ils
mangent de la brioche”, attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette in response to growing
concerns about the shortage of bread in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution, is
what today we would call a fake news, probably released for political purposes. The socalled post-truth society, where the diffusion of false rumors and news or shamelessly
partisan conceptions prevails over real and verifiable facts, is not an invention of the 21st
century, nor is it linked, as it is often stated, to the rise of the Internet and social media.
This essay aims to demonstrate that pre-revolutionary French society was already a
mature and complete post-truth society, and that this phenomenon was exacerbated
during the Revolution.

Ever since ancient times, marvellous yarns have been told about the existence of diminutive peoples in faraway lands. Despite their modern identification with short statured hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of Africa, the telling of similar tales has not entirely abated. Anthropologist Martin Walsh recalls his encounter with a former arrow poison trader who recounted his capture and imprisonment underground by a group of Wabilikimo, the fabled Pygmies of the East African interior. Was this just another tall story about short people, or a mangled memory of real events?

News organizations are meant to play a critical role in the dissemination of quality, accurate information in society. This has become more challenging with the onslaught of hoaxes, misinformation, and other forms of inaccurate content that flow constantly over digital platforms.
Journalists today have an imperative—and an opportunity—to sift through the mass of content being created and shared in order to separate true from false, and to help the truth to spread.
Unfortunately, as this paper details, that isn’t the current reality of how news organizations cover unverified claims, online rumors, and viral content.
Lies spread much farther than the truth, and news organizations play a powerful role in making this happen.
News websites dedicate far more time and resources to propagating questionable and often false claims than they do working to verify and/or debunk viral content and online rumors. Rather than acting as a source of accurate information, online media frequently promote misinformation in an attempt to drive traffic and social engagement.
The above conclusions are the result of several months spent gathering and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data about how news organizations cover unverified claims and work to debunk false online information. This included interviews with journalists and other practitioners, a review of relevant scientific literature, and the analysis of over 1,500 news articles about more than 100 online rumors that circulated in the online press between August and December of 2014.
Many of the trends and findings detailed in the paper reflect poorly on how online media behave. Journalists have always sought out emerging (and often unverified) news. They have always followed-on the reports of other news organizations. But today the bar for what is worth giving attention seems to be much lower. There are also widely used practices in online news
that are misleading and confusing to the public. These practices reflect short-term thinking that ultimately fails to deliver the full value of a piece of emerging news.

What are these bad practices? Key findings include:
• Many news sites apply little or no basic verification to the claims they pass on. Instead, they rely on linking-out to other media reports, which themselves often only cite other media reports
as well. The story’s point of origin, once traced back through the chain of links, is often something posted on social media or a thinly sourced claim from a person or entity.
• Among other problems, this lack of verification makes journalists easy marks for hoaxsters and others who seek to gain credibility and traffic by getting the press to cite their claims
and content.
• News organizations are inconsistent at best at following up on the rumors and claims they offer initial coverage. This is likely connected to the fact that they pass them on without adding
reporting or value. With such little effort put into the initial rewrite of a rumor, there is little thought or incentive to follow up. The potential for traffic is also greatest when a claim or
rumor is new. So journalists jump fast, and frequently, to capture traffic. Then they move on.
• News organizations reporting rumors and unverified claims often do so in ways that bias the reader toward thinking the claim is true. The data collected using the Emergent database revealed that many news organizations pair an article about a rumor or unverified claim with a headline that declares it to be true. This is a fundamentally dishonest practice.
• News organizations utilize a range of hedging language and attribution formulations (“reportedly,” “claims,” etc.) to convey that information they are passing on is unverified. They
frequently use headlines that express the unverified claim as a question (“Did a woman have a third breast added?”). However, research shows these subtleties result in misinformed audiences.

These approaches lack consistency and journalists rarely use terms and disclosures that clearly convey which elements are unverified and why they are choosing to cover them.
Much of the above is the result of a combination of economic, cultural, temporal, technological, and competitive factors. But none of these justify the spread of dubious tales sourced solely from social media, the propagation of hoaxes, or spotlighting questionable claims to achieve widespread circulation.
This is the opposite of the role journalists are supposed to play in the information ecosystem. Yet it’s the norm for how many newsrooms deal with viral and user-generated content, and with online rumors.
It’s a vicious-yet-familiar cycle: A claim makes its way to social media or elsewhere online. One or a few news sites choose to repeat it. Some employ headlines that declare the claim to be true to encourage sharing and clicks, while others use hedging language such as “reportedly.” Once given a stamp of credibility by the press, the claim is now primed for other news sites to follow-on and repeat it, pointing back to the earlier sites. Eventually its point of origin is obscured by a mass of interlinked news articles, few (if any) of which add reporting or context for the reader.
Within minutes or hours a claim can morph from a lone tweet or badly sourced report to a story repeated by dozens of news websites, generating tens of thousands of shares. Once a certain critical mass is met, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. The rumor becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity.
Meanwhile, news organizations that maintain higher standards for the content they aggregate and publish remain silent and restrained. They don’t jump on viral content and emerging news—but, generally, nor do they make a concerted effort to debunk or correct falsehoods or questionable claims.
This leads to perhaps my most important conclusion and recommendation: News organizations should move to occupy the middle ground between mindless propagation and wordless restraint.
Unfortunately, at the moment, there are few journalists dedicated to checking, adding value to, and, when necessary, debunking viral content and emerging news. Those engaged in this work face the task of trying to counter the dubious content churned out by their colleagues and competitors alike. Debunking programs are scattershot and not currently rooted in effective practices that researchers or others have identified.
The result is that today online news media are more part of the problem of online misinformation than they are the solution. That’s depressing and shameful. But it also opens the door to new approaches, some of which are taking hold in small ways across newsrooms.
A first, essential step toward progress is to stop the bad practices that lead to misinforming and misleading the public. I offer several practical recommendations to that effect, drawing upon research conducted for this report, as well as decades of experiments carried out in psychology, sociology, and other fields.
Another point of progress for journalists includes prioritizing verification and some kind of value-add to rumors and claims before engaging in propagation.
This, in many cases, requires an investment of minutes rather than hours, and it helps push a story forward. The practice will lead to debunking false claims before they take hold in the collective consciousness. It will lead to fewer misinformed readers. It will surface new and important information faster. Most importantly, it will be journalism.
My hope is that news organizations will begin to see how they are polluting the information stream and that there is an imperative and opportunity to stop doing so. Organizations that already have good practices might also recognize that they can—and must—engage more with emerging news and rumors to help create real understanding and spread truth.
There is simply no excuse. We can and must do better.

Public debate over fake news has become ubiquitous in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yet, up until now, there has been a dearth of scholarly attempts at defining the term ‘fake news’. This has led to the paradoxical situation that populist leaders who dominate the news cycle regularly use the label ‘fake news’ as a negative epithet to discredit any critical reporting. The present paper seeks to fill this conceptual void by reviewing existing characterizations of fake news and by proposing a stipulative definition of the term ‘fake news’. Fake news, it is argued, is the deliberate presentation of (typically) false or misleading claims as news, where the claims are misleading by design. The validity of this definition is tested in two ways: first, by contrasting fake news with other forms of public disinformation; second, by considering whether the proposed definition can help identify conditions for the emergence of fake news. The recent resurgence of fake news, it is argued, is in part due to design features of online social media, which enable the targeting of specific audiences and the exploitation of cognitive biases and heuristics on the part of consumers, in an attempt to ensure the production and reproduction of fake news.

https://www.nlobooks.ru/books/otdelnye_izdaniya/22042/
Годы Первой мировой войны стали временем глобальных перемен: изменились не только политический и социальный уклад многих стран, но и общественное сознание, восприятие исторического времени, характерные для XIX века. Война в значительной мере стала кульминацией кризиса, вызванного столкновением традиционной культуры и нарождающейся культуры модерна. В своей фундаментальной монографии историк В. Аксенов показывает, как этот кризис проявился на уровне массовых настроений в России. Автор анализирует патриотические идеи, массовые акции, визуальные образы, религиозную и политическую символику, крестьянский дискурс, письменную городскую культуру, фобии, слухи и связанные с ними эмоции. По мнению автора, к 1917 году эмоциональное восприятие действительности стало превалировать над рассудочно-логическим, а конфликт традиционного и модернового мировоззрений не позволил сплотить российское общество на основе патриотических идей, выстроенных вокруг устаревшей самодержавной мифологии. Во время революции 1917 года слухи во многом определяли течение политических событий. Владислав Аксенов — специалист по социальной истории России начала ХХ века, старший научный сотрудник Института российской истории РАН.

En este artículo se desataca la interrelación que establecen los discursos orales con los discursos mediáticos a partir del análisis del rumor del Chupacabras. Dicho rumor versa sobre un ser que chupa la sangre de los animales, sobre todo de las cabras y a veces de los seres humanos, produciéndoles en ocasiones la muerte. Circuló sobre todo en los noventa en México, Estados Unidos y otros países de América Latina. En una primera parte se señala la manera como algunos medios de comunicación participaron en a configuración del rumor del Chupacabras en México. En la segunda parte se presenta un análisis de las versiones orales distintas de dicho rumor producidas por sujetos en dos contextos culturales diferentes en la sociedad mexicana: en un sector social semiurbano que le confiere gran verosimilitud al rumor del Chupacabras y un sector urbano que no le atribuye ninguna verosimilitud.

On August 23, 1908, just one month after the restoration of the constitutional regime, İstanbul fell victim to conflagration that had erupted in Çırçır (Fatih) and burnt many neighbourhoods to the ground. There followed many small fires which sparked panic and anxiety among the populace as they were thought to have been intentionally set by arsonists. The arson panic occasioned contention over the meaning of the fires. It led to the spread of rumors that both the Çırçır fire and arson attacks had been organized and conceived by disgraced spies of the Palace in order to bring back the old regime –despotism (istibdat). Contrary to what people thought and believed regarding the perpetrators and their alleged intentions, the Ottoman press and the new provisional government did not incriminate the spies, but instead, attributed the arsons to ex-convicts who had been released from prisons following the proclamation of general amnesty at the end of July and “vagrants” who had come to İstanbul from Anatolia after the revolution.
In this article, I analyse these rumors by situating them in the post-revolutionary and the post-disaster context of İstanbul so as to shed some light on this extraordinary episode in the late Ottoman history. My purpose is not to prove or disprove the validity of rumors, but rather to examine why such rumors erupted at this specific moment, how various actors (people, press and government) perceived and interpreted the arsons, and how this perception had an impact on mass behavior as well as on the political agenda of the post-revolutionary government. The rumors of arson circulating in İstanbul started a public discussion about the inefficacy of the police to fight crime and led people to take security matters into their own hands. Growing concerns over security of life and property and the discourse on “dangerous classes” legitimized authoritarian responses under the pretext of appeasing public disquiet and restoring public order in the capital city and ultimately, provided the government with a rationale to redefine the limits of liberties in the age of liberty.

Across multiple societies, we see a shift from regimes of truth (ROT) to “regimes of
posttruth” (ROPT) characterized by proliferating “truth markets.” ROT corresponded
to disciplinary society, tighter functioning between media/political/education apparatuses, scientific discourses, and dominant truth-arbiters. ROPT corresponds to societies of control, where power exploits new “freedoms” to participate/produce/express (as well as consume/diffuse/evaluate). These developments further correspond to postpolitics/ postdemocracy, where issues, discourses, and agency for sociopolitical change remain constrained, despite the enabling of a new range of cultural and pseudopolitical participation around, among other things, truth. ROPT emerge out of postpolitical/postdemocratic strategies common to control societies where especially resource rich political actors attempt to use data-analytic knowledge to manage the field of appearance and participation, via attention and affect.

Although in the Ancient Rome the practitioners of magic were able to cause terror, pain and despair to their victims, and to use somebody else's fear as a powerful ally, they also experimented dreads and anxieties in relation to their own magical performances and their consequences. This contribution offers a study of the magician's fears, and deals with the topic of the complex relationship between fear and magic in the Ancient World.

Desde 1768 hasta 1812 aparecen registros de ciertos rumores que corrían entre los esclavos de la provincia de Antioquia y que en más de una ocasión causaron gran conmoción en las autoridades de esta gobernación. La gran mayoría de ellos afirmaba, con algunas variaciones, que había llegado una real cédula desde España, a través de la cual el monarca de las Indias concedía la libertad a todos los esclavos de sus reinos. Sin embargo, estos últimos sospechaban que sus amos ocultaban el escrito y, por tal razón, en 1781 y 1798, por ejemplo, hicieron planes de unirse para ir al cabildo de la ciudad de Antioquia a reclamar el documento que certificaba el mandato real.

Esta investigación se enmarca en el episodio de 1781, producido en el contexto de la Insurrección Comunera. A diferencia de los otros sucesos acaecidos a raíz de los rumores de la cédula, este se encuentra muy bien documentado, permitiendo comprender diversos aspectos como las relaciones que se tejían entre los diferentes actores, las reacciones de las autoridades al enterarse de un posible levantamiento por parte de la población esclava, entre otros.

L'analyse des textes évangéliques mentionnant la rumeur montre que celle-ci était un élément bien intégré dans le fonds traditionnel concernant Jésus. Que Jésus ait été l'objet de la rumeur s'accorde par ailleurs avec le fait que les informations circulaient principalement de bouche à oreille dans le cadre d'une culture où l'oralité prédominait. Le rôle que jouait à cette époque la communauté dans la détermination de ce qui était honorable ou honteux explique que la rumeur ait influencé, en bonne ou mauvaise part, la renommée de Jésus. Les rumeurs à propos de Jésus faisaient écho à des préoccupations politiques et religieuses dont il est possible d'établir l'existence pour le Ier s. de notre ère. Si bien que ce qui se disait sur Jésus pouvait tout autant susciter l'espérance de ceux qui attendaient la délivrance eschatologique d'Israël que représenter une menace contre l'ordre établi que s'efforçaient de garantir les autorités judéennes.

An analysis of the Gospel texts that mention rumors shows it to have been a well-established feature in the traditional material concerning Jesus. That Jesus was an object of rumor makes sense given that information was mainly shared by word of mouth within a predominantly oral culture. The role of the community of that time in defining what should be thought of as honorable or shameful explains how rumor, construed either positively or negatively, had an influence on Jesus'renown. Rumors about Jesus echoed political and religious concerns that can be shown to have existed during the 1st century CE, so that what was said about Jesus could inspire hope in those awaiting the eschatological deliverance of Israel or, equally, pose a threat to the established order that the Judean authorities sought to maintain.

This thoroughly researched book addresses an important problem: what did Jews of the Warsaw ghetto know about the events taking place outside of the ghetto and how did they understand them? What information various groups of Jews had about the chain of events that we refer to today as 'the Holocaust'? How did the knowledge about it emerge among the Jews 'then' and 'there'?
Maria Ferenc's monograph contributes the growing field of research regarding the circulation of knowledge during the Holocaust by showing how vital were information. The author shows the multitude of Jewish reactions and responses to the knowledge about the genocide. She explores the subject of the existential experience of Holocaust victims and the psychological and cognitive mechanisms in confrontation with the news about the functioning of the death camps.
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Ile wiedzieli‚ zamknięci w getcie warszawskim‚ Żydzi o tym‚ co dzieje się poza murami? Jakie znaczenie miały dla nich informacje o przebiegu wojny? Jak zdobywali wiadomości o eksterminacji Żydów‚ jakie pogłoski do nich docierały i jak na nie reagowali? Kiedy zrozumieli‚ że wszyscy Żydzi zostali skazani na śmierć?

https://ksiegarnianatlomackiem.pl/kazdy-pyta-co-z-nami-bedzie-mieszkancy-getta-w,3,4744,5029

The crisis in our current news ecology (which has serious repercussions for democracy) can usefully be approached via a particular pattern in the deep history of news mediating systems. In so doing, from a point of departure prior to the emergence of the printed newspaper, this contribution will concurrently explore the value of discerning those systems in terms of the basic patterns (the deep topology) traced by their spatial diffusion of news, of which there are two, definitive of distinct modes: circulation from one (active) mediator to another (trans-mission); radiation from a central originator to multiple (passive) recipients (broad-casting). Reception of news via these respective modes triggers quite different expectations with regard to its authenticity and authority.
In pre-modern England openly circulated information was referred to as ‘news’, for which ‘rumor’ was a synonym invoking the sound of the many voices achieving its transmission. But information that would now qualify as news was also diffused to the population at large by means of radiation in the form of proclamations issued by central and local authorities.
Thanks not least to the affordances of print, such official radiation of news was gradually usurped by newspapers, and ‘news’ was increasingly equated with authentic information from an authoritative source (to be accepted until disproven),
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‘rumor’ concurrently degrading into circulated information of questionable veracity (to be suspected until proven).
This role-distribution persisted through the era of radio and television news broadcasts, but recently the news ecology has experienced an upheaval which, it is suggested, might in some ways be characterized as a ‘Renaissance of Rumor’. The privileged status of radiated news was challenged when digital technology and the internet enabled its achievement with little by way of resources or expertise, while circulated news, re-emerging into prominence both independently and in an ambiguous hybrid with radiation, continued to be appreciated on the basis of factors other than its ultimate source or its verifiability. Identifying this closing of a chronological ‘News parenthesis’ may ultimately point to remedial action, but from a cultural historian’s perspective recent studies of the massively documented genesis and evolution of internet rumors may rather provide insights into pre-print processes for which such evidence is highly sporadic

The following paper will try to show the centrality of is-lands, geographical or perceived, to Mediterranean-wide in-formation flows and intelligence gathering, a feat that could only be achieved after a thorough analysis of primary docu-mentation dispersed among the fonds of early modern archives. It will aim to show how the islands’ dual nature as closed and isolated worlds, paradoxically situated at the center of maritime trade connections and seaborne distributions, and thus connecting different parts of the Mare Nostrum, rendered them ideal places of intelligence activity, undertaken by information brokers and go-betweens of all stripes.

“Between Connectivity and Isolation: Insularity and Information Flow in Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean,” in War, State and Society in the Ionian Sea (Late 14th – Early 19th Century), ed. Gerassimos D. Pagratis (Αthens: Hêrodotos Editions, 2018), 27-58.

Au début de l’année 2010, au Sénégal, apparaît une étrange rumeur d’« offrande de la mort » : un individu à bord d’une voiture distribuerait des aumônes qui tuent les personnes qui les acceptent. L’histoire fait la une de l’actualité et plusieurs personnes, accusées de distribuer ces offrandes mortelles, sont violentées par la foule. Afin de mettre en perspective cette rumeur insolite, nous montrons que celle-ci met en crise la mendicité et la solidarité religieuse qui la sous-tend. La rumeur révèle ainsi, dans le contexte de l’islam sénégalais, les ambiguïtés inhérentes à l’économie morale de l’aumône (sarax en wolof). En faisant émerger une zone grise entre religion, magie et sorcellerie, ce cas exemplaire de cadeau empoisonné interroge de manière inquiète le spectre des rapports possibles entre les registres du don et du sacrifice, deux thèmes classiques de l’anthropologie depuis Marcel Mauss.