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Rumor, Trust and Civil Society: Collective Memory and Cultures of Judgment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Gary Alan Fine
Gary Alan Fine*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
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Extract

Contemporary societies are awash in rumor. For better and worse, we live in an information surround in which there is simultaneously too much information and too little. Many wish to persuade us of truth claims, or, at the very least, to share them. These claims may have an uncertain provenance, but, under the right circumstances, we incorporate them into our belief system, act upon them, and recall them through collective memory.

Given these claims, the question becomes who, what, where and when do we trust. To the extent that reactions to assertions about society channel our actions, judgment is necessary, even if it is only implicit and tacit. The analysis of rumor belongs to the sociology of action. To produce a response, we must judge both those who communicate and what they communicate. As an everyday practice, we engage in the politics of credibility and the politics of plausibility. These concepts are tied to issues of public trust within civil society.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 5 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2007

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