Where there are hot spots, there seem to be rumors. A few days ago, public security organs in many places announced a number of related cases of using AI tools to carry out rumor-mongering, raising concerns about AI mass-producing rumors.
Recently, a series of fake news such as "reversal" in the field of public opinion have appeared frequently - "the strongest flood peak in 40 years has passed through Chongqing, and Hongya Cave has been flooded", "Xi'an Jiaotong University graduates are called 'academic Daji'", "Wei Shen donated tens of millions of dollars to fight floods" and a series of fake news have been refuted, which not only made the public confused who to believe, but also aroused the anger of many people who have been fooled by rumors repeatedly.
As the saying goes, "Spread rumors with one mouth, refute rumors and break your legs." A more alarming phenomenon is that even if some rumors are exposed, a series of "sequelae" caused by their trust in the parties, the online environment and society are difficult to eliminate.
Rumors are easy to break, but the crisis of trust in society is difficult to repair. When the stories of "The Princes of the Beacon Opera" and "The Wolf Comes" are frequently staged, who will watch over the integrity and truth of the public space? In the era of information explosion that "burns after reading", how to prevent and treat the "sequelae of rumors" that may harm every ordinary person?
▲ The Internet rumor that "the strongest flood peak in 40 years passed through Chongqing, and Hongya Cave was flooded" is untrue. / Chongqing refutes rumors
There is no need to say more about the abomination of rumors. However, in the age of social media, everyone has no choice but to be in a sea of information. For rumors, it is difficult for many people to identify and avoid, and a series of "sequelae" brought about by the flood of rumors are even more difficult to prevent.
Behind the emergence of "rumor sequelae", there is a complex "pathogenic mechanism". In today's world where attention has become a scarce resource, rumors are often more circulating than the truth. Some bloggers take advantage of the psychological characteristics of the public, such as curiosity and conformity, and deliberately use false rumors and incite emotions, only caring about harvesting traffic for themselves, and using the Internet as a free pool for making money, even if they are "slapped in the face" by refuting rumors, they still act recklessly. And when rumors have been spread a thousand times, the truth is often late to no avail.
As Gustave · Le Pen wrote in The Rabble: "At a given point, we forget the source of these repeated assertions and choose to believe them." Under the influence of the powerful "contagion mechanism" of rumors, the precise push of algorithms traps the audience in the "information cocoon", and the boundary between rumors and truth has become blurred.
For example, in the previous incident of "netizens fabricated that kindergarten teachers fed contraceptive pills to young children", although the suspect who spread the rumors has been criminally detained, and the police and the media have clarified the truth of the incident in a timely manner, the attention of netizens has not decreased but increased, and some netizens continue to spread false information, and even ignore the police report.
The reason why the "sequelae of rumors" is difficult to prevent and treat lies in the insidious and latent nature of its "symptoms".
Some people may think that if the rumors did not happen to them, there would be nothing to lose. However, the reason why rumors are emerging in an endless stream today is that they have formed a hidden interest mechanism. Rumor-mongers attract attention by confusing the public, forming an industrial model of "making profits from rumors", the essence of which is to seek personal interests by occupying public resources, and the result is that they pollute the public space and social ecology.
People often think that as long as the rumors are refuted, the rumors will die. In fact, from the generation to the demise of rumors, they have invisibly harmed multiple subjects, and even if they are eventually refuted, they may still cause continuous and irreversible harm to the parties and participants of the incident. The cost of spreading rumors is low and the cost of refuting rumors is high, and the two are far from equal.
▲Resolutely curb online rumors. Xu Jun/Xinhua News Agency
Rumors emerge in an endless stream, and many people suffer from them, and in the Internet era, the harm of "rumor sequelae" should not be underestimated:
The breeding of online anger can easily lead to "information bullying" of ordinary people. Looking back at the series of reversal incidents that have occurred in recent years, it is not difficult to find that as long as hot events are made public on the Internet, they may be magnified, misunderstood, and "judged", resulting in "the tyranny of the majority".
The Internet is unbounded, and it also hurts people invisibly. In the case of "Pink-haired Girl Committed Suicide by Cyberbullying", the blogger wanted to record the warmth and touching between her grandparents and grandchildren, but her photos were stolen by unscrupulous marketing accounts, and some netizens put many "unwarranted" labels, enduring waves of online violence.
The plot of self-confession in the movie "Let the Bullets Fly" seems absurd, but it is similar to the helplessness of the rumor-mongers in reality who fell into the "self-proof trap". When malice in cyberspace continues to expand, goodwill will also be squeezed and shrunk.
Public opinion is out of focus, resulting in "bad money driving out good money" in the information field. In the post-truth era, once rumors and emotions become "traffic passwords" and self-serving and irresponsible remarks take over the mainstream, it will bring challenges to public discourse and news value. When the public chooses to "put the facts aside", even if the truth prevails in the end, it is still a victory.
For example, in the "fat cat" incident, some netizens paid more attention to the private information of the parties involved such as the emotional experience of the "fat cat", and carried out online violence against their ex-girlfriends, causing public opinion to slide into confrontation and tearing, occupying a lot of public resources.
When the "after-effects of rumors" become more common, social trust will also face a crisis. The reason why the "sequelae of rumors" is even more terrible than the rumors themselves is that they dissolve the facts, and over time it will cause a crisis of trust that "the wolf is coming". Frequent "reversals" gradually eat away at the public's patience and confidence, and in the long run, the richer the information in the public space, the more the public does not know who to trust.
Trust is always a valuable social public asset. It takes a lot of time and money to build and maintain trust, and sometimes it takes "a rumor" to destroy it. In this sense, vigilance and prevention against the "sequelae of rumors" have become an urgent public issue.
▲ "Don't believe rumors, don't spread rumors" public service advertisement. / Internet Information Office of Gaoyi County, Hebei Province
The France scholar Cap Ferret once pointed out that "rumors are the oldest medium of mass communication". Today, in the face of new variants and a series of "sequelae" produced by rumors, how can we prevent and treat them?
To treat the "sequelae of rumors", we must first take the word "prevention" first. Before the truth has put on its shoes, rumors have run around the world. Therefore, only by finding a way to stop the rumors first can we prevent a series of "sequelae" that may appear in the future.
At present, the mainland attaches great importance to the governance of cyberspace, and the "Qing Lang" series of special actions at the national level continue to be carried out, giving a clear signal to "show the sword" to the bad trends such as online rumors. On this basis, it is more necessary for all media platforms to actively assume social responsibility, jump out of the thinking of "traffic theory", strengthen the identification and screening of rumors, optimize the recommendation mechanism for key authoritative information, and let the truth run ahead of rumors.
For example, the Cyberspace Administration of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee launched the "Chongqing Rumor Refutation" account matrix, innovatively created special columns such as "Chongqing Rumor Refutation Small Theater" and "Big Coffee Rumor Refutation Alliance", and at the same time cooperated with relevant departments in Sichuan to create a Sichuan and Chongqing Internet linkage rumor refutation platform, timely released authoritative rumor refutation information, actively responded to the concerns of the masses, and effectively compressed the living space of rumors with authoritative voices.
Every participant in cyberspace should also be aware that rumors are not their business. Only by constantly improving one's media literacy, maintaining a sense of reverence for the truth, using reason to fight fanaticism, and being soberly aware of the "sequelae of rumors" and its potential threats, can we better protect ourselves and others in cyberspace.
At the same time, it is necessary to use the means of "scraping bones to cure poison" to cut off the root cause of "making profits from rumors." The "sequelae of rumors" are difficult to eradicate because the interest mechanism behind them is still operating. As long as the benefits of rumour-mongering outweigh the costs they need to pay, rumors will revivenation.
In the face of the greed of the wrongdoers, they should be feared. Regulatory departments should hold high the sword of the rule of law, adhere to the combination of lawful crackdown and comprehensive governance, actively build a full-process, full-coverage, and full-closed-loop regulatory system of pre-event prevention, in-process supervision, and post-event accountability, and replace "Jianghu justice" with "order justice" through effective means such as establishing a "blacklist" system, and not give any opportunity for those who deceive the world and steal their reputation.
If the "sequelae of rumors" do not recur, refuting rumors should never be the end of the rumor handling mechanism. The rumors stop at the truth, but the concern of the masses continues. For the public who have been fooled by rumors, it is reasonable to ask questions about the follow-up progress of the incident, the punishment of the rumor-mongers, and how to make up for the consequences. Relevant departments should establish a long-term working mechanism to follow up and respond to social concerns in a timely manner, so as to gradually restore the public's trust in authoritative information.
On the other hand, if passive and brutal governance methods such as information control and blocking keywords are adopted in the face of rumors and relevant information after rumors have been refuted, it is very likely to have a "chilling effect" that hinders the spread of truth, and is not conducive to creating a positive, active, clear and sunny online environment.
Facing up to the problem and treating the symptoms, the "sequelae of rumors" are not terrible, and a clearer and more trustworthy cyberspace is worth looking forward to.