After the earthquake, all kinds of rumors, big and small, were flying everywhere. The existence of the internet seems to have greatly strengthened the spread of rumors. Of course, we can also use the internet to conveniently search for more information and thereby dispel some shallow rumors, but most people probably do not use the internet that way.
Compared with BBS forums and search engines, today’s SNS and microblogs seem more conducive to the spread of rumors, because BBS forums and search engines require a certain kind of active participation. Although posts on BBS forums can be reposted without restraint, browsing a BBS is after all an active act, and beneath reposted threads there will often be other netizens’ relatively rational discussions for reference. Search engines, though they can transmit a huge amount of information to us, precisely because there is so much information, still require active effort to sort through and filter it.
On SNS or microblogs, by contrast, the main activities are just passive reading and the small effort of sharing. Even if one makes some comments on the shared information, the next person who shares it will not copy those comments, but will only pass along the original information. Traditional rumor-spreading patterns always undergo layers of distortion; as information circulates, it becomes more and more outrageous and more and more false. Rumors spread from one place to another, constantly changing their appearance, but it is hard for them to rapidly trigger synchronized action among a very large population. The microblog-style pattern of dissemination, however, can copy a piece of information on a massive scale, producing a rapid amplification effect. Once a rumor amplified by the internet enters a traditional environment of word-of-mouth transmission, it may cause an extremely rapid and coordinated frenzy. This is a new situation unprecedented in the past.
Just as when a certain TV station once broadcast fake news of a Martian invasion on April Fools’ Day and immediately caused chaos throughout the city, in the present situation such citywide, even nationwide, collective riots could happen at any moment. The difference is that television media are after all still controllable and top-down; if the source is kept in check, nothing too serious will happen. But internet media, especially microblog media, are decentralized, and rumor transmission is fundamentally difficult to predict or control.
The salt-buying frenzy was indeed foolish, but the people who rushed to buy salt can hardly themselves be called foolish. Of course, buying enough salt in one go to last for decades is indeed a stupid thing to do, but acting on the principle of safety first and that one will sooner or later need to buy it anyway, rushing out to buy three or five bags can also be called a kind of appropriate practical wisdom. The question worth reflecting on in this incident is not how foolish ordinary people are, but rather the sense of security in this society. People do not believe that this society will remain orderly in the face of disaster or shortage. In particular, elderly people who lived through that long period of scarcity would of course rather make preparations in advance, just in case.
How might one do as much as possible to avoid the large-scale collective unrest that can at any moment erupt in the age of the internet? Controlling the internet is of no use: the more one tries to manipulate mainstream information, the more inclined people become to believe rumors from the grapevine, which is precisely the situation in China now. But liberalizing the internet also does not solve the problem, for rumors can still be rapidly magnified at any time. Increasing the public’s knowledge is also irrelevant. Richer knowledge may perhaps prevent this salt panic, but more technical rumors can still spread widely. Rumors always appear at the boundary between the known and the unknown. Perhaps the richer one’s everyday knowledge becomes, the more varied rumors will be. For example, this salt rumor this time was actually generated on the basis of people’s existing degree of understanding about iodine, Japan, nuclear radiation, and so on.
The key still lies in the sense of security in society. Rather than saying that rumors stop with the wise, it would be better to say that rumors stop with the composed. People always live depending on others, and the saying “three people make a tiger” applies here: everyone around me says so, yet I still stubbornly cling to so-called knowledge (prejudice?) and dismiss what they say with contempt. Such an attitude may not really count as wisdom. The issue is not that we must always depend on others and therefore are bound to believe others, but rather that we do not yet trust one another enough. If people trusted one another to such an extent that they believed that in times of disaster or shortage, order could be maintained, scarce supplies could be distributed in an orderly fashion, and those in difficulty would receive help from others, then even if we did believe rumors, we would not panic so badly. It is precisely because we do not trust others enough, because we lack confidence in social order, and because we foresee that when hardship comes the entire social structure will grind to a halt, with every institution and every other person proving unreliable so that one can rely only on oneself, that we become so tense under the pressure of rumors.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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