During his talk on the dark side of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at MYRA School of Business, H. Ragha Rao recalled a few significant worldwide ICT-mediated rumours causing major changes among the public across the world.
This included the 2010 Haiti earthquake and a disaster rumour in Ghana; rumour that hurricane Sandy had flooded the trading floor in New York Stock Exchange; the result was a stock market crash, wrong identification of an Indian-Amercian student (Sunil Tripathi who was found dead) as one of the suspects in the Boston bombings as a result of which his parents received hate mails etc.
Prof. Rao said that optimal rumour-mongering conditions are wartime, natural calamities, terrorist attacks, and such critical situations.
The reasoning is that unexpected crises produce uncertain information circling around the unfamiliar situations which elevate the levels of anxiety.
He explained that during crisis, people tend to turn to their social networks such as “kins, friends, co-workers, and neighbours” to acquire situational information; many rumour studies have empirically shown that rumours travel faster through strong social ties; people are easily persuaded by messages received from ‘in-group’ members, the same messages are not so persuasive when received from ‘out-group’ members.
His study also revealed that rumours received through email were more likely to be believed and shared with others and that the patterns of circulation and belief exhibited strong political bias.
Prof. Rao concluded that in an age where mobile technologies are ubiquitous, it could throw up opportunities as well as unexpected threats to the general well-being society especially in terms of the rapid and wide spread of unverified information through invisible personal networks.
During crisis, people tend to turn to their social networks to acquire situational information
