The ethics of rumoring

Rumor is essential to any community’s life. It’s the oldest and one of the most efficient means of group communication. People select the most important information and pass it on to the next person. The information spreads really quickly, because the channels of communication are horizontal, and because the information is selected, arranged, and made more interesting with each transmission. Rumors allow for both anonymous and named sources; they also serve as an instant, continuous measure of public opinion and provide valuable feedback to the group’s leadership.

Of course, information also is changed with each transmission. Each transmitter has his or her own agenda, and will put a spin on every message to achieve certain goals. So, the originator of the message does not control the message, like in the mass media. Rather, the message is controlled by multiple players; it mutates again and again. This fluidity is what makes them so appealing to people: everyone gets to be not only a passive recipient, but an empowered creator of the message. While no one likes to find out about a rumor where one figures in a bad light, we must admit that the limitations of the medium are the other side of its strengths. Rumors are also conveniently deniable, because no written record of them exists. It is also impossible to trace the rout of the rumor, so the authorship of alterations is always unclear; they have certain authority without having a real author. It is a profoundly democratic and profoundly unfair medium of communication.

People who argue against any rumors are sadly mistaken about the nature of the informational space. Information is always contested, and messages are distorted in every media; rumors are not exception in this regard. Mass media all do and have always done the same thing. It’s the multiplicity of media that makes the consumer of information free to chose which spin to believe, and how to play all messages against each other in the elusive search for truth. So, if you do not like a rumor, start another one, or counteract it through other kinds of media.

In my experience working in two cultures, I have noticed that Russians are a lot more proficient in rumors than Americans. Because of the decades of alienation from state-controlled mass media, and lack of informational technologies, Russians have developed very efficient horizontal channels of communication. When I worked with Russian groups, all I needed to do is to say to one person: let’s get together tomorrow morning at 9. The whole group will show up, because every member feels an obligation to convey any relevant information to everyone else. In the same way, opinions, stories and explanations are easily spread. Americans will usually make a distinction between official information on a bulletin board and just something someone has said. Their trust for official channels is much greater; they are more likely to believe the official story and ignore the rumors. This is not to say that Americans do not enjoy a good rumor, especially if the official channels of information are suspect for one reason or another. The rumor mills kick in overdrive really fast in the situation of conflict or tension, especially involving authority.

There is still the ethics of rumor. Like any other human activity, rumor mills cannot operate without some norms. For example, a colleague came in this morning to confront me about something I have said about her to someone else. Of course, the quote was wrong and the intent of the statement was reversed. While I wanted to comfort and protect the person's dignity, the message came back as mean and degrading. There were at least two information transmissions here: one between myself and the third person, and another between the third person and the colleague. In both there could have been simple misunderstanding of the content of the message, or intentional change, or some of both. Because rumors are so powerful, and so secretive, most people are actually careful to guard the most affected and vulnerable people against potentially hurtful rumors. For example, you don’t just come to someone and say: “hey, I’ve heard your marriage is falling apart.” Or, “Say, I’ve heard you’ve got cancer.” This is what kids do in junior high, where they just learn the art and the ethics of rumor. Adults who care about each other create protective informational bubbles around each other, and will try to avoid hurting their neighbor.

I know that certain personal tidbits of information about me are circulating among my colleagues, but I also trust they won’t just bring it up in a conversation with me, unless someone is trying to manipulate or fight me. I have made some comments about my colleagues that I need to trust will not get to them. Those comments were made to solve a particular problem, or to vent, or to help someone to find a way of working together. The assumption is such comments are confidential. Confidential means the comments may be shared with most people, but not with the person in question. Rumors rely on trust and sensitivity. Taken out of context of a conversation, most things we say about each other can be damaging.

Another good rule is about crossing the media boundaries. A message that came through as a rumor cannot be directly converted into a mass e-mail confronting the messenger. Of course, if you’re in a middle of a war and there is no real community, those rules are ignored. However, in an everyday normal course of events, this is a violation of the ethics of rumoring. If you received a rumor damaging to your reputation, your first obligation is to trace and confront the source in person, just to find out of the message is correct. This is simply to acknowledge the nature of rumor: it is not designed to convey accurate information, but to tell a story. Any sort of mass media message (including e-mails) requires a fact-finding mission first. The gap between two media cannot be crossed arbitrarily and at will, because each medium follows different rules and assumptions. This is why no real journalist will publish something not confirmed on record. They all know a lot more than they can publish, precisely because rumors are a very different kind of media. It took hundreds of years for journalists to develop this ethics; in the age of electronic media everyone has to learn the same.

Rumors also cannot be used in important, formal decisions. Either good or bad things we hear about someone cannot be used to evaluate one’s performance, for example. For decisions like that, we need hard evidence produced with some rigor. So, one who engages in rumors should have an ability to ignore information gathered by them. They provide much needed background knowledge, but not the foreground knowledge. No one can be hired, fired, or evaluated on the basis of rumors.

Some people simply refuse to discuss someone in one’s absence, and refuse to engage in any kinds of rumor. I think this is unwise and too extreme. Getting along in complex groups is all but impossible without these sorts of discussions. How do you get along with someone difficult if you can never discuss your problem with any third person? It is also helpful that some of these discussions leak into the informational space, so their results can be shared. Rumors can be both healthy and damaging, but they can never go away. Therefore, we just need to work on ethics of rumors to minimize damage and maximize benefits.