谣言:概念的反思及其对现代社会的启示

Rumor:Rethinking its Definition and the Enlightenment to Modern Society

传统对谣言的认识局限在它的负面性质上,认为谣言是指没有事实根据的传闻,故意捏造、口耳相传的消息。压制、消灭也是在谣言出现后所采取的惯常做法。然而,在近几次社会事件中,谣言的迅速蔓延却表现出了一股来自社会民众中的强大力量,政府对谣言的压制在某种程度上已经成为对民众言论的压制,这显然与现代社会所倡导的民主理念是背道而驰的。本文在对前人研究进行反思的基础上,提出了一个新的谣言概念:谣言是由隐性社会问题引发的、以消息的形式表达的民众议论。它要求一个有效的社会舆论监督体制的建立以及进一步完善大众传媒的社会职能。

Traditional attitude toward rumors is negative as rumors are regarded as hearsays without any factual foundation or news fabricated and spread orally on purpose. The common way to deal with them is to suppress and delimit them. However, in a series of great social events, the rapid spreading speed of rumors revealed a strong power coming from the public, and consequently, suppressing rumors by the government, to some degree, has been changed into suppressing the speech of the masses, which obviously is opposite to the democratic idea initiated in modern society. This paper, based on the rethinking about the studies of the predecessors, puts forward a new concept of rumors, i.e. rumors are a kind of public discussion roused by recessive social problems and expressed in the form of message, which requires an efficient supervision system and perfection of the social function of mass media.