The Lunar New Year in 2020 not only tests the determination of young people to save themselves at home, but also tests their ability to persuade their relatives to wear masks with emotion and reason.
But this is only the initial test, and the advanced is how to deal with rumors.
Family WeChat group, the source of rumors, and the high incidence area of IQ tax.When relatives warn their relatives and friends here in the name of "forwarding to save the whole life" and "expert emergency reminder", do you often clench your fist but there is nothing you can do?
What’s even more troubling is that many rumors look so similar that you can’t recognize them and even forward them to your circle of friends.
So is Ya Wen.
Yawen is a teacher in Changsha. During the Spring Festival at home, she not only prepares lessons for students, but also dispels rumors for her parents. Through the WeChat group, two dietotherapy fans kept forwarding "expert recommendation! These foods can resist Covid-19! " Class articles, even bought 10 Jin of Houttuynia cordata "said to be useful" to boil water to drink. This made Yawen laugh and cry.
In the face of these revelations from "insiders" and various WeChat screenshots, Yawen is also somewhat powerless. The huge amount of information makes it difficult for her to identify some specious rumors in an instant.
In order to let you see the rumors in this epidemic more comprehensively, we have collected more than 1,000 rumors since the outbreak of COVID-19 on various platforms. This is not only a routine to let you see through rumors, but also to provide you with some tips to prevent rumors in the current information surplus.
1. What are the characteristics of popular rumors during the epidemic?
Some rumors during the epidemic are "false at a glance" for young people, and it is difficult to identify them. For example, drinking high-alcohol anti-virus, smoking anti-virus, drinking urine anti-virus. Of course, these rumors were not only discovered by most netizens in an instant, but also became Prozac in a long holiday.
But there is another kind of rumor, which at first glance makes some sense, so it is not so easy to distinguish it.
We collected and sorted out the suspected rumors collected and summarized by Lilac Garden and Sina’s official @ Catch Rumors @ during the COVID-19 epidemic, and divided them into popular science rumors and event rumors. Let me make a general comb for you first.
So far, among the popular science rumors compiled by Lilac Garden,Most rumors are related to the type of virus, the route of transmission, effective drugs and masks.
The latest popular rumor is "Covid-19 belongs to SARS virus" which was born on February 9th. But last night, you already knew through hot search and official response-this was actually a "slip of the tongue".
After the "slip of the tongue", the popular rumor that has been confirmed as a rumor is "Can the paper towel in the mask be used repeatedly?" And "Zhong Nanshan team prescribed Chinese herbal tea?" Their answers are all in the negative. So stillTry to use a mask at one time, don’t trust the cure, and go out less is the first stunt of safety.
If you look around, you will find that,The birth and spread of this part of popular science rumors is mainly due to "interlacing like a mountain."We ordinary people have no ability to distinguish information involving professional knowledge in a certain field, and we can only trust authoritative people. Therefore, we find that the spread of these event rumors is often attached to an important name.
Among the most topical rumors published by @ Catch a Ballad, the top three are "Academician Zhong Nanshan infected COVID-19", "Academician Zhong Nanshan suggested gargling with salt water to prevent virus" and "Bai Yansong invited Zhong Nanshan to be a guest in News 1+1 on the evening of 26th". I believe that you have heard all these rumors, and without exception, you tied yourself to the name "Zhong Nanshan". They seem to be well-organized, and they are all rumors without exception.
In this way, you can see such rumors that are difficult for us to distinguish.In fact, it is to use the blind spot of knowledge and the celebrity effect to make rumors.Some rumors will combine the two, which really looks like that.
2. Typical routines of rumors
In order to better identify the routine of rumors, we have sorted out more than 1,000 rumors from today’s headline rumor collection, WeChat WeChat official account rumor collection, Sina rumor collection, and Weibo account @ Weibo rumor collection, and made a careful analysis.
The first thing we studied was, in this epidemic, whichkeywordIt has become the first choice for rumor makers. As you can see,"Hospital", "mask" and "WeChat group" are the favorites of rumor makers, and place names such as Hubei, Shanghai, Wenzhou and Beijing are also popular. Of course, there is also the "Zhong Nanshan" mentioned earlier in the rumor-prone area.
After reviewing the rumors about masks, we found that,Rumors about masks are also divided into several factions.. One kind of rumor is that the mask can be used after being blown by a hair dryer or disinfected with alcohol; One kind is that the masks purchased by foreign countries have been delayed to arrive because they have been requisitioned by the customs; There are also rumors that some car trunks come standard with an N95 mask … In short, as the number one scarce product in this holiday, rumors about masks have never stopped.
"WeChat group" ranks third among the key words of rumors, because "WeChat group" is almost the common beginning of rumors:"Someone in a WeChat group said …".
If rumors are classified according to their contents, these sample rumors can be divided into four routines:City closure, medical prevention and control, and folk anti-epidemic methods are related to Wuhan.
Since Wuhan temporarily closed the passage from the Han Dynasty, rumors about the closure of the city have also begun to splash. Among the keywords, you can see the names of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Nanjing. There are such means as "stopping traffic", "blocking roads" and "prevention and control", and there are also some figures.
To sum up, most of the rumors of city closures have a similar one.template：Because of the demand for prevention and control, the road in X city was closed and stopped from X day.Because of the painful experience during SARS, Beijing in the epidemic is also the most common city among the rumors of city closure.
Rumors of medical prevention and control have also risen with the epidemic.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, news about the shortage of medical resources has been broadcast on TV, and various videos recorded in hospitals have been madly transmitted in the WeChat group, which has aroused public concern and concern about medical prevention and control in various places. In this context, many people believe the rumors such as "the emergency treatment in a certain hospital stopped", "the doctors and nurses in a certain hospital were infected with COVID-19" and "the confirmed cases in COVID-19 fled from the hospital".
In the rumors of folk epidemic prevention, you can strongly perceive the anxiety of ordinary people.
In addition to the N ways we mentioned earlier about the use of masks, this accounts for the bulk of the rumors of anti-epidemic among the people. In the rumors, you can also see such means as "garlic", "Shuanghuanglian" and "hot bath", as well as effect-oriented words such as "prevention" and "treatment".
There is also a large category of rumors, mainly around Wuhan.On the one hand, there are many rumors about materials and medical assistance in Wuhan; On the other hand, there are many rumors about Wuhan people moving to various provinces and cities and even abroad.
Due to the recent inaction and chaos of the Red Cross Society in Hubei and Wuhan,Wuhan and the Red Cross.Related news received the most attention, which also attracted the most rumor makers, resulting in rumors such as "Wuhan Red Cross charged 6%~8% of the handling fee to Shanghai medical team" and "Wuhan Red Cross sold vegetables donated by Shouguang".
On the other hand,The data of 5 million people flowing out before the closure of Wuhan triggered a public opinion earthquake.Immediately after that, there were similar rumors, such as "novel coronavirus, a family of three in Wuhan, was diagnosed during a Disney visit", "116 Wuhan tourists were denied entry and repatriated to Hangzhou" and "a Wuhan woman ended the French strike, and the French went to grab masks".
The most amazing thing is that one isThe license plate number of "Zhejiang BL0535". In the versions of rumors in various places, the owner of this license plate number has been diagnosed as COVID-19, whose main task is to wander around the country as far as Tibet. After verification by the public security organs, there is no vehicle registration information under this license plate number.
With the change of time, the subject of rumors is also changing.
Just like the change of epidemic situation, the number and subject of rumors are changing with time.
In terms of quantity, although the number of rumors declined in early February, the overall trend is still increasing. In the six time nodes before January 20th, @ Weibo refuted 1.2 rumors every day on average. However, from January 21st, the number of rumors began to increase with the news of "people-to-people", and suddenly broke out on January 25th.
arrivedJanuary 29The number of rumors reached the first high point, 48. After that, the number of rumors dropped slightly. But inFebruary 7th.The number of rumors reached a new high, reaching 58.
By comparing the data with the news background, we find that:There are usually major events around the nodes with high rumors.
For example, on January 20 thZhong Nanshan announced that the virus was "human-to-human"; After the closure of Wuhan on January 23, it came out.Other cities outside Hubei followed suit and closed the city.Rumors that Zhong Nanshan was infected with the virus also occurred at this time.
On January 27,Low working efficiency of Wuhan Red Cross Society.It not only produced a large-scale spontaneous supervision by netizens, but also produced a series of exaggerated events.
By early February,Should I rework it?It has caused widespread discussion, and urban disinfection has also triggered the birth of many rumors.
In various time periods, major or absurd events will attract a lot of attention.In the process of transmission, some information will be misinterpreted and misunderstood, so that while the real news is exposed, there are new rumors.
When a large number of rumors are produced and interfere with audio-visual, we can actually describe their spread process with a formula.American sociologists G·W· allport and L Postman once summed up a formula of rumor: rumor = importance * vagueness.
This means that if a rumor is important enough, plus ambiguity, it has sufficient conditions for rapid spread. Sometimes, rumors that do not have such conditions will become full of flavor after being increased, decreased and strengthened in the process of communication. So the rumors spread more and more outrageous.
Later, communication scholarsCrossAfter developing this formula, it is put forward that rumor =Importance xFuzziness, public critical ability.Explain how powerful rumors are, which depends on both the transparency of real information and the judgment level of the audience.
Therefore, how far and far rumors can spread is not only testing the judgment ability of the audience, but also testing the efficiency and transparency of the authoritative department.
All kinds of rumors and false information will not only be of no help to the epidemic, but also increase the psychological burden of the masses, aggravate the panic of the society and undermine the confidence in comprehensively fighting the epidemic. Therefore, in this epidemic war, the battle about information and rumors is also very important.
In the matter of stopping rumors, we can try our best to be rational and use our knowledge and logical reasoning to prevent those false rumors from spreading more widely.
But we all know that ordinary people really don’t have the ability to distinguish information with professional knowledge barriers. At this time,More open and reliable information from authoritative organizations and professionals may be the effective way to fight rumors.At worst, the above-mentioned people and institutions can make fewer slips of the tongue and be more rigorous, which is a positive contribution to stopping the epidemic.
