Studies of the phenomenon of rumour can no longer avoid paying particular attention to recent transformations of structures in the public sphere. On the one hand, the central role of media in the classification of items of information as ‘rumours’ and in their subsequent publicization and dissemination has become entrenched. On the other, rumours have come to be treated not just as simple pieces of information but rather as a dimension of the political or secular interchange that goes on within larger or smaller groups. These two paradigmatic hypotheses have been recently advanced notably by Pascal Froissart (2002) and Philippe Aldrin (2005). Froissart has shown that our awareness of rumours is very largely moulded by the major place accorded to them in the media, and that many so-called rumours said to have been spontaneously generated from within the body of society in fact find their origin and their channels of propagation effectively within the media itself. For his part, Aldrin would break with the standard interpretation of rumour content as often reflective of the shifting nature of collective psychology, substituting for this, notably for rumours of a political type, a ‘transactional’ approach, by which the rumour is analysed as a form of information that enters circulation in the course of everyday interactions, or ones linked to potential political outcomes.