Recently the word “rumor” has once again become a hot topic, and a full-scale “war” against “rumors” is plainly about to break out. At a time like this, it is all the more necessary to reflect on what “rumor” really means.
On Weibo, I saw Sun Haifeng repost Deng Wenchu’s “Nine Theses on Rumor,” written several years ago, and applauded it enthusiastically (you can find it among some of the earliest posts on his blog, though it seems a few of the theses have been harmonized?). Later I read Kapferer’s Rumor: The World’s Oldest Media
Deng Wenchu notes that in the *Cihai* there are two meanings of “rumor”: first, “reports without factual basis, fabricated news”; second, folk songs or proverbs in popular circulation. And in the *Ciyuan*, the basis for the *Cihai*, which was compiled in the Republican era, there are also two meanings: first, “folk songs and proverbs circulated among the people that comment on current affairs,” and second, “reports without factual basis.” Deng Wenchu points out:
From the *Ciyuan* to the *Cihai*, the content of “commenting on current affairs” in “rumor” disappeared, while “fabricated news” was added. This “one addition and one deletion” may seem insignificant, but in fact it concerns the very classification of “rumor,” reflecting the interruption of an ancient system and tradition, and reflecting the rise of institutions and a culture for sanctioning rumor.
In the present “war against rumors,” the word rumor has probably been reduced to only this one meaning of “fabricated news.” But on the one hand, this meaning cuts off tradition; on the other hand, it cannot stand on its own anyway. It is like defining “science” as “correct propositions”: although it is not entirely off the mark, it is obviously an overly naïve fantasy. In actual scientific activity, propositions put forward in the name of science are not always correct, but such a definition—“good things go to science, bad things to superstition”—excludes every incorrect proposition from the scope of science, with the result that science is forever correct. Rumor is similar, except that it is defined as forever wrong. Of course, you could simply define “science” as “the correct,” but such a definition has no practical significance at all.
Rumors are not always false—that is precisely what Kapferer emphasizes from the outset: if they were always false, no one would take rumors seriously. It is precisely because some rumors are eventually proven true that they attract attention. Excluding, by arbitrary definition, those reports that are eventually verified from the category of rumor does nothing to help people avoid rumors from the start. For before that final verification actually occurs (and sometimes it never occurs at all), people do not know which information is false; unless the circulation of “true” information is also forbidden, one cannot expect people to reject from the outset information that may turn out to be false.
Even defining rumor as “unverified information” or “reports without factual basis” will not work. The key lies in when something counts as being “verified,” and what sort of facts can count as “basis”—these are often not self-evident matters. Several trusted friends and relatives of mine have told me that they saw so-and-so happen with their own eyes; isn’t that a powerful verification? But that is also a common mode of rumor’s spread. Once we are inclined to believe a rumor, many things in our everyday experience will become “evidence” supporting it. But how much of such “evidence” must accumulate before we can say that it is “information with factual basis” and “already verified”? Who gets to say?
In the general process of information dissemination, the one who “gets to say” is always the corresponding “official authority.” An official message, an “authoritative message,” can usually establish a kind of trust and provide a final “correct” piece of information that thereby halts rumors. For example, people rumor that Apple is about to release a larger iPhone 5, but then Apple releases the iPhone 4S, whose size remains unchanged; at once all the previous rumors are stopped, because Apple’s “official message” is obviously beyond question. If it says it will not be releasing the iPhone 5 any time soon, then it certainly will not; everyone who gathers and spreads rumors is waiting for the release of the “official message.”
But more often, the emergence and circulation of “rumor” arise precisely from people’s distrust of the “official.” People feel that the “official” is concealing something or deceiving them about something, and so rumors directly confront official authority. In such cases, even an authoritative announcement from the official will not stop the rumor; sometimes it will even further stimulate its growth.
Whether people trust or distrust the “official,” the position of “rumor” is always the opposite of “official news.” Rumor challenges the official, either by hoping for an official announcement or by questioning the official announcement already made. Rumor is “folk news,” and what such news lacks is not correctness or truthfulness, but “authority.”
Of course, in a certain sense, rumors do indeed lack “basis,” because in their circulation they are often anonymous; we often do not know, or find it hard to verify, the “source” of a rumor. Rumors do not, like official news, have a definite origin and then spread one-way from the top down. Rumors circulate among a plurality of people. One might even say that the production of a rumor and its circulation are one and the same thing: rumor is often generated in the very process of circulating.
Kapferer points out: “Rumor is the group speaking” (p. 24) — “The issue of the source of a rumor is not, fundamentally, important. At the starting point of the rumor process, what must be explained is the participation and mobilization of the crowd; even if there is a first instigator, the basis of the rumor still lies in others, in those who hear the rumor and then spread it.” (p. 25).
People believe and spread certain rumors because the new statement resonates with some of their prior, already existing cognition. Kapferer cites an experiment (p. 100): a rumor that coffee causes cancer was spread in an office, and those most inclined to believe this claim were precisely the people who usually did not drink much coffee, whereas those who usually had the habit of drinking coffee were more inclined to reject this new cognition that might disrupt their existing habit. During World War II, “Americans turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the many ‘suspicious’ signs of Japanese naval preparations and mobilization, because they simply did not believe the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor.” (p. 24) It is easy to imagine that believers in apocalypticism are more inclined to believe rumors about doomsday or catastrophe.
That is to say, when a rumor that disturbs people appears, what matters is not rushing to trace the “culprit,” but reflecting on why this rumor was able to spread. When people maintain trust in the “official,” all manner of bizarre rumors amount to little more than a hope for an authoritative statement; then, once a convincing statement is made, the rumors no longer pose much of a threat. The reason rumors embarrass the official is first because the official’s credibility is already impaired—not that rumors make the official lose authority, but that the official’s loss of authority gives rumors a market. Second, it is not rumor that causes the public’s suspicion and dissatisfaction; rather, rumor is precisely a reflection of latent public opinion. The reason people tend to accept certain rumors uncritically and directly is that, for them, those rumors are already “verification” rather than a “challenge” — “The power of rumor lies in the fact that it often provides precisely the information that confirms what we vaguely feel or hope to hear. Rumor is information that is in harmony with our inner thoughts.” (p. 115) For someone who often drinks coffee, the claim “coffee causes cancer” constitutes a challenge; if they are to accept it, they will necessarily have to overturn themselves, so they will be more cautious in weighing and verifying this information. Even if they do not verify it, they will not be eager to spread the news further, because in passing it on to others they are simultaneously carrying out a self-negation. By contrast, someone who already detests coffee has little motivation to verify it; even if they half-believe it and half-doubt it, they are more likely to treat this matter, which is none of their concern, as an amusing topic of conversation and further disseminate it.
Put simply, if official authority is widely trusted, or if in people’s minds there is no hostility toward the official, no sense of crisis about their circumstances, or no expectation of some sort of malicious pleasure, then rumor is really not so terrible at all. And when the public is bewildered by rumors, that means the crisis has long since been lurking beneath the surface. Rumor is a way of venting public sentiment; using authoritarian power to prohibit rumor unilaterally is utterly futile, and not even worth calling a mere “treating the symptoms, not the root cause.” If rumors continue to be verified, if the official’s suppression measures are repeatedly shown to be attempts to conceal things by drawing a veil over them, then the spread of rumor will enter a vicious cycle—people trust official messages less and less, rumors gain more and more of a market, and the official suppresses more and more, commits more and more mistakes, and triggers a collapse of credibility. The public will not remember ninety-nine false reports, but as long as one rumor hits the official’s weak point, people will never forget it. The errors of rumor do not add to the official’s score, but every attempt to hide things by covering them up will certainly chip away at the official’s authority.
Moreover, even if a baseless rumor is indeed forcefully refuted, that still does not necessarily help the official. Kapferer gives an interesting example (p. 265): in one experiment, students were arranged to watch a soap opera, and when a McDonald’s commercial came on, a prearranged classmate inserted a remark telling a rumor about McDonald’s: that earthworms were mixed into the hamburgers. The experiment was divided into four groups. In the first group (rumor only group), there was only this inserted remark; in the second group (rumor plus refutation group), after the student’s interjection, the host added a convincing debunking: the Ministry of Agriculture had already tested McDonald’s hamburgers, and besides, earthworms were more expensive than beef, so it was simply impossible; in the third group (rumor plus differentiation group), the host talked about his experience of eating delicious earthworm seasoning in some French restaurant; in the fourth group (rumor plus recombination group), the questionnaire added many questions about how the subjects usually frequented McDonald’s. In the end, the subjects’ degree of fondness for McDonald’s hamburgers was tallied—the result was that the group that received the refutation had roughly the same level of fondness for McDonald’s as the first group (even slightly lower), while the scores of the latter two groups were significantly higher.
Of course, this special-case experiment cannot prove that rumor debunking is always ineffective, but it at least shows that the public’s emotions do not depend on whether a rumor is true or not.
Suppression falls into a vicious cycle, and refutation is not necessarily effective either. So how, after all, should the official treat rumor? It is not as difficult as it sounds. The most basic point is not to regard rumor as an evil that must be eliminated; do not forcefully confront rumor, but rather try to guide it and take rumor as one of the constitutive elements in building a healthy social system of communication.
In fact, this is precisely the “lost tradition” that Deng Wenchu mentions. In ancient China, “rumor,” or rather folk songs satirizing current affairs, had long been a constructive component in the political system. The saying goes, “observe Heaven’s intent through disasters and blessings, and observe the people’s sentiments through rumors and customs”; “understanding social trends and public opinion through rumors, folk songs, and the like, and connecting the sentiments above and below, is the main tradition of ancient people-centered politics.” (Nine Theses on Rumor)
Speaking of so-called “people-centered politics,” I am reminded again of “Mencius.” Whether one says Mencius was people-centered, democratic, or something of the people, the key is that what determines the legitimacy of the ruler is “the people’s approval,” “public opinion,” rather than “the people’s benefit.” “What Heaven sees is what my people see; what Heaven hears is what my people hear.” The ruler’s being said to have received the Mandate of Heaven is in fact the same as receiving it from the people, and the people’s receiving it is precisely through “praising songs.” First of all, of course, one must not block the people’s ears and eyes and senses; then one looks at the people’s songs—looks at whom the songs praise and whom they satirize—in order to gauge the gains and losses of governance.
The reason the *Book of Songs* was included among the Six Classics is not because of its literary significance, nor because of the many love poems it contains. One key reason is that many of the folk songs in it aim to criticize contemporary abuses and satirize officials. The Master said: “My young friends, why do you not study the Odes? The Odes can inspire, can be observed, can bring people together, can express complaint. Near home, they teach you how to serve your father; farther afield, how to serve your ruler. And you learn the names of many birds, animals, plants, and trees.” (*Analects*, Yang Huo) In a certain sense, “rumor” represents “folk knowledge” and “local knowledge,” and possesses rich content.
Of course, folk songs are often exaggerated, lacking in textual verification, emotional, and entertaining; these are also the features for which so-called “rumor” is so often criticized. But if we look at them from the angle of complementing official knowledge, these very features are precisely rumor’s irreplaceable strengths. Rumor creates an atmosphere of suspicion toward authoritative knowledge, generating tension with unanimous praise and keeping society’s “music” from becoming rigid and slack.
Leftists attack the Nanfang media group, accusing these media outlets of magnifying social unease through exaggerated, sensationalist means. Of course, if one were to evaluate these newspapers as though they were academic journals, I too would express dissatisfaction. However, if we say that newspapers should return to the proper role of “public opinion,” to put it bluntly, if we take “spreading rumors” as the journalist’s proper duty, then the situation is entirely different. Deng Wenchu mentions:
Since modern times, with the emergence of modern newspapers and other forms of journalism, the system of “reporting matters heard” has been inherited by the media. The earliest Chinese-language newspaper, *Shenbao* (founded in 1872), which used “mu duo” as its trademark, maintained that “the practice of those in power soliciting the people’s opinions on governance was something that had already existed in ancient China,” and that news is a continuation of the tradition of “the wooden bell collecting songs.”
The mission of “public opinion” does not lie in indoctrinating the public from above with “truth,” but rather in spreading the people’s “opinions” from below upward. Modern newspapers ought, like ancient folk songs, to express the people’s joys and grievances in exaggerated, emotional, and entertaining forms, and ought to generate the necessary tension with the official. There is no need to fear rumor; to fear rumor is to fear public opinion, and to make rumor one’s enemy is to make the people one’s enemy.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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