A Study Of Rumors Spreading In Crises

Recently, during the period of social transition, Chinese economic, political, and cultural and many other aspects are experiencing a complete and new change, accompanied by a variety of risks and crises. Thus, a rich soil has been provided to spread rumors. Because the spread conditions and the crisis between the characteristics of the incident showed a high degree of correlation, so, a crisis event is often accompanied by a large number of rumors, and rumors will give birth to crisis vice verse. The recent "Shishou Issue" and "Urumqi 7·5 riot" are the well-represented groups of events.On the basis of literature review about related study at home and abroad, begin with the viewpoint of the Crisis issue, this paper contrasts the different characteristics of rumor under normal and crisis conditions. And on the classic formula of gossip and rumors of Allport, the paper does further inquiry for the underlying social mechanism on the variables caused changes in this formula. Finally, the functions and control methods of rumors spreading have been argued.This paper concludes that rumors spread, apart from the relationships with human beings'Review Mechanism, has close relationships with the aspects of social imbalances on information resources, the lack of public awareness of the crisis, the less credibility of both government and the media, as well as all kinds of institutional shortcomings. Therefore, the rumors protection must focus on the social soil that breeds rumors, not the rumor itself.