Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T01:44:16.850Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rumor, Trust and Civil Society: Collective Memory and Cultures of Judgment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Gary Alan Fine
Gary Alan Fine*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Contemporary societies are awash in rumor. For better and worse, we live in an information surround in which there is simultaneously too much information and too little. Many wish to persuade us of truth claims, or, at the very least, to share them. These claims may have an uncertain provenance, but, under the right circumstances, we incorporate them into our belief system, act upon them, and recall them through collective memory.

Given these claims, the question becomes who, what, where and when do we trust. To the extent that reactions to assertions about society channel our actions, judgment is necessary, even if it is only implicit and tacit. The analysis of rumor belongs to the sociology of action. To produce a response, we must judge both those who communicate and what they communicate. As an everyday practice, we engage in the politics of credibility and the politics of plausibility. These concepts are tied to issues of public trust within civil society.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 5 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2007

References

Allport, Gordon and Postman, Leo G. (1947) The Psychology of Rumor. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1975) How to Do Things With Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, Frederick (1932) Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Raymond A. and Gleicher, D. B. (1953) ‘Word-of-Mouth Communication in the Soviet Union’, Public Opinion Quarterly 17: 297–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campion-Vincent, Véronique (2005) ‘From Evil Others to Evil Elites: A Dominant Pattern in Conspiracy Theories Today’, in Alan, Gary Fine, Véronique Campion-Vincent, and Heath, Chip (eds), Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend, pp. 103–122. New Brunswick: Aldine/Transaction.Google Scholar
Dégh, Linda (2001) Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Donovan, Pamela (2004) No Way of Knowing: Crime, Urban Legends and the Internet. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Gary Alan and Turner, Patricia (2001) Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America. Berkeley: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar
Gladwell, Malcolm (2000) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1961) Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark (1973) ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78: 1360–1380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimer, Carol (2001) ‘Solving the Problem of Trust’, in Cook, Karen (ed.), Trust in Society, pp. 40–88. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Kelman, Herbert C. (1973) ‘Violence Without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers’, Journal of Social Issues 29: 25–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knapp, Robert H. (1944) ‘A Psychology of Rumor’, Public Opinion Quarterly 8: 22–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maines, David (1999) ‘Information Pools and Racialized Narrative Structures’, Sociological Quarterly 40: 317–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messick, David and Kramer, Roderick (2001) ‘Trust as a Form of Shallow Morality’, in Cook, Karen (ed.), Trust in Society, pp. 80–117. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright (1940) ‘Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive’, American Sociological Review 5: 904–913.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neill, Barry (1994) ‘The History of a Hoax’, New York Times Magazine (March 6): 46–49.Google Scholar
Peterson, Warren and Gist, Noel (1951) ‘Rumor and Public Opinion’, American Journal of Sociology 57: 159–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosnow, Ralph L. and Fine, Gary Alan (1976) Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Scott, Marvin and Lyman, Stanford (1968) ‘Accounts’, American Sociological Review 33: 46–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shibutani, Tamotsu (1966) Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Turner, Patricia (1993) I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture. Berkeley: SAGE Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zerubavel, Eviatar (1997) Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar