How does social media spread and expand rumours?

How does social media spread and expand rumours?

Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum. 

Rumour is of all pests the swiftest. 

“Rumours have many eyes and ears, are stronger when they walk; they walk on the ground but their head is hiding in cloud, and they usually appear at night while sitting on the ground at morning.” Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro, B.C. 70~19) the great poet of Rome said. 

He spoke eloquently about rumours in a single sentence. When rumours were told, people who had nothing to do would regard it as gossiping, and they would not regard it as important. However, rumours have existed with human history, and today's advances in information and communications and media services, such as the internet, smartphones and social networking services, have grown to a greater extent than ever before.

In particular, rumours among teenagers spread rapidly, exaggerating, and spreading false rumours. That is because the development of information and communication is rapidly shaping up in the current generation of teenagers, and as a result, they are changing rapidly. 

With many social networking services coming out and becoming a culture, it is no longer visible to teenagers who do not use the Internet or social networking services. As many young adults use SNS, the pace of diffusion of information is becoming faster. That means rumours and scaremongering spread everywhere rapidly. 

As a facebook-lover teenager, I want to tell you about the relationship between rumours and facebook. The features of facebook are freely shared with others through sharing comments and tags, as well as community members who share a similar hobby or interests. Especially, people who communicate with a lot of information, such as people's interests, by postings, and lots of messages, have a lot of follow-up numbers that keep them share faster and more frequently. Information spreads, rewrites, and exaggerates rapidly in this process.

There was also this occasion I experienced. In the wake of the earthquake, the first explanation of the photo was described as, “The road that has been cracked after earthquake in Korea.” After the photo posted, the same photo was posted in another Star Account with these descriptions; "The aftermath of the earthquake in Japan" and “The cracked road because of an earthquake In New Zealand". Because the star accounts have many followers, many people share, mention, tag, and spread to their acquaintances. 

There's a lot of rumours spread on Facebook platforms, which is one of Facebook's most popular networks. How many of the rumours are going to be distributed today, and how fast will they spread?

People are more interested in exciting and false information than informed and truthful information. For instance, in the run-up to the presidential election, the conservative party spreads rumours about North Korea that they will set off world war, and creates an air of anxiety so then people should be worried about the change of regime. Although the government officially announces that these rumours are not true, people are more likely to be imbued with exaggerated and provocative articles than truthful information, giving legitimacy to their sense of insecurity.

   

This is a picture demonstrating that people have more interest in false information. The blue line, which represents fake news, records 10 times more tweets* than the red ones that represent the facts. As this graph demonstrates, gossip can be more provocative to people, spread quickly, and become a social problem.

*The number of posting that has been uploaded in tweeter daily.

As long as the SNS platform is used by many people, it will not be possible to stop spreading rumours. Then we need to try to separate the truth from the fake information.

As many rumours spread on SNS, people will have to develop the ability to interpret and absorb information correctly in their own values rather than rely on the wrong information immediately. In particular, this is important for teenagers concerned about social networking sites and rumours.

Written by Yena Ahn