Research On The Impact Of Rumors Spreading On Government Decision-Making

Rumor is an information that has not been officially verified and is a common phenomenon in human society.The COVID-19 situation has suddenly caused a lack of smooth information through institutional channels,spreading panic,anxiety,dissatisfaction and other emotions in the social atmosphere,and promoting the generation and spread of rumors related to COVID-19.With the spread of rumors,the rumors containing public sentiment and public concern have become the important channel for the government to learn public opinion,and have an impact on the decision-making process of the government.This study takes local rumors related to COVID-19 in Hubei province from January 2020 to December 2021 as the research object,through content analysis and depth interview method on the text of rumors and the motivation of disseminators,and summarizes the characteristics,generation mechanism and transmission power of rumor,so as to summarize the dynamic mechanism of rumor spread affecting government decision-making.That is to analyze whether there is an influence between rumor spreading and government decision-making and the underlying motivation.First of all,this study combs and analyzes rumor texts and refuting rumor texts.From the perspective of characteristics,rumors related to COVID-19 in Hubei province contain certain emotional significance.The public’s panic,anxiety,dissatisfaction,concern and other emotions are accompanied by the rumor spreading,and it also shows the characteristics of the sporadic repeated law and the backwardness of rumor refuting in the circle communication and differential order system.In terms of content,rumors do have a certain degree of "limited truth".The information refuted may not be false,and the official confirmation or falsification can be included in the refuting procedure.Based on the analysis of the rumor refuting texts,there are five generating mechanisms of COVID-19 related rumors:preconceptions,quotes taken out of context,causal association,misunderstanding and deliberate fabrication.There are four driving forces for spreading rumors:social currency,information exchange,emotional release and profit seeking.Through the comparative analysis of rumor database and policy database,it can be found that rumor propagation can indeed affect government decision-making.Secondly,this study linked the spread of e COVID-19 related rumors to the government’s decision-making process,and found that rumors gathered people’s emotions and gained wide attention.Some rumors also generated public opinion crisis,affecting the public’s trust in the system and emotional attitude,and then called on relevant departments to solve the problem in a timely manner by putting pressure on the government.The government discovers public opinions through rumors,and then takes corresponding government decisions to unblock information channels and restore trust in the system.The government obtains information from rumors is a process that cannot be ignored in the communication between the government and the people.The more information the government obtains in the decision-making process,the higher the quality of government decision-making.As COVID-19 has changed from a strange event to a normal one,government decisions spread by rumors have gradually matured,rumor refuting platforms that emphasize citizen participation have emerged,and the public’s institutional trust has been restored.Again,this study found that in the process of the spread of rumors,the national of issue and the openness of discuss,the self-trust and others-trust,group identity to vulnerable groups,media reports on relevant public opinion,the influence of past collective memory,and deliberative democracy policy can affect the public view and spreading rumors of psychology,but also the different degrees of influence on government decision-making.Based on the analysis of the effect of government decision-making and the current situation of rumors related to COVID-19,this study argues that society and academia should carry out more refined classification of "rumor".When making decisions,the government can regard unknown rumors as a source of public opinion and pay more attention to the real information and propagation motivation reflected by rumors,so as to better grasp the public opinion reflected in them.On this basis,the government should be highlighted for a communal main body role,set up information open and transparent system,perfect the mechanism of interaction,with the tools of the new era of technology to combat false information,thus cultivating positive social trust,security institutional channels to provide information,better governance false information,form a good and harmonious political communication and dialogue.