Effacing the Dilemma of the Rumoring Subject: A Value-Oriented Approach towards Studying Misinformation on Social Media

• Main Author: Aricat, Rajiv
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Rumor; Social media
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/86554; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44102
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Rumor has been part of collective human life for centuries. Communities deal with anxiety and make sense of the unknowable by mixing apprehensions with what is already known to them. With modernity, and in line with studies on a range of social phenomena, there have been efforts to develop a science on rumor. Most of these studies deal with rumor at the propositional level, such that the rumoring or rumor-rebutting subject invariably belongs to one of the two sides of the ‘true-false’ divide. Similar categories are followed in the study of rumor in social media, where the nodes in a rumor chain are, however, less hierarchical, and where images are increasingly used for persuasion. This paper, following a value-oriented approach, argues that the science on rumor has objectivized the problem, and has suggested instrumental solutions like enhancing the digital literacy of social media users. Whereas, a value position should ideally attempt to efface the dilemma of the rumoring/rumor-rebutting subject, and locate rumors within the larger socio-political and historical context of a society.