Rumors are the transmission of information through personal contacts and other social channels. They can be reliable or unreliable, but they can play an important role in the formation of opinions and moods in society.
Instructions
Step 1
The rumor phenomenon is the process of communicating information through social media. Rumors may differ in varying degrees of credibility.
Step 2
Contrary to popular belief, rumors do not necessarily have anything to do with reality. Researchers have made many attempts to prove the opposite. So, in the course of one of these experiments, sociologists conducted a survey of people with different levels of education and income. All of them were asked the same question - "How often do you come across rumors?" It turned out that the higher the intellect and the level of prosperity of a person, the more confident he is that he often encounters rumors. But in fact, the results of this experiment do not say anything about the reliability of rumors and only confirm the connection between intellectual development and subjective perception of rumors.
Step 3
Rumors are not expressed in value judgments. For example, when one girl secretly tells another about her attitude towards a young man - this is not a rumor. It's another matter if she accompanies her story with previously unknown facts from his biography. Rumors are born only when the information transmitted from person to person contains information about the subject, facts.
Step 4
Rumors as a phenomenon have been known since time immemorial. They were even used for political and ideological struggle. For example, even during the heyday of the Roman Empire, the Romans spread rumors in the enemy troops about the unprecedented bravery of their soldiers. Apparently, the Tatar-Mongols also used a similar technique. Russian chroniclers were sure of the large size of the Tatar army and estimated it at no less than 10,000 people. Although, according to historical demography, the Tatar-Mongols simply physically could not have such a huge army at that time.
Step 5
In the modern world, with the beginning of the flourishing of market relations, rumors began to be actively used for commercial and manipulative purposes. There were companies in the United States that spread rumors to advertise goods, provoke workers' strikes, fight against these strikes, and so on. For example, in order to prevent a strike, it was not uncommon for a rumor to be launched among the wives of workers in a factory that union members were paid for protests by workers.
Step 6
Rumors play the role of a universal means of conveying information, especially when other methods of gathering information are difficult. They can serve as a driving force in the formation of opinions and moods in society and are often used as an instrument of additional political influence.
