Rumor is a story that may be true or false and can’t be verified. It can cause a lot of fear or even panic, like when it was reported that there could be toxic chemicals in the rain after the Japan earthquake. Rumor can also spread through social media, such as Twitter and Facebook. When a rumor is false, it is important to disseminate the correct information in order to prevent people from acting unnecessarily and harming themselves or others.
The process of a rumor spreading is similar to the epidemic spreading and most studies on rumors are based on the Daley-Kendall model. There are three classes of people in a network: people who have not heard the rumor (ignorants), those who hear the rumor but do not believe it (exposed) and those who spread it to other people (spreaders). The probability that an ignorant person will become a spreader is given by the formula g =
Besides the social implications of a rumor, it can have economic and political implications as well. A rumor can influence consumer behavior and make decisions on purchasing products or services, and it can also affect corporate image and reputation. For example, when a corporation buys a competitor, the acquired company may be subject to rumors about the acquisition. These rumors can negatively affect the business and financial performance of the acquired company.
The spread of a rumor depends on the information characteristics as well as the social context and is governed by the social dynamics, such as the Law of Large Numbers, social contagion and polarization. It is also influenced by the dynamics of trust and credibility, which determine how a rumor spreads. The rumors that are most likely to be believed have high-level, sensational content, and they are often fueled by impulsive emotions such as anger, envy and jealousy.
In the Internet era, rumors are spreading at a fast pace and there is an increasing need to analyze this phenomenon. A study by Wang et al. used data from social media to analyze a rumor that spread after the Japan earthquake. They analyzed tweets from people who reported the rumor as well as later tweets that were corrections of the rumor. They found that the rumors were more likely to spread when they were first reported, but that the appearance of later correction tweets decreased the spread of the rumor. This suggests that the rumor was not entirely accurate, but it is difficult to prove this because the rumors were posted online and the data were not collected in an experimental setting. The results of this study suggest that the structure of a social network has an effect on the propagation of rumors. The study is still ongoing and the authors plan to use more data in the future.