"Don't believe it, it's a rumor. The official has refuted it!" The netizen "Millie" quickly reminded me after receiving a health care post from her mother back home. "How come? It's very clear". The old man didn't listen to Millie's advice and forwarded it to friends and relatives
In recent years, a large number of online rumors have staged "new tricks", making netizens call it "impossible to prevent". Why is the Internet rumor repeatedly prohibited? What new routines have been added in recent years? In this regard, the reporter launched an investigation.
Rumors of "hard hit areas" are gradually concentrated
According to the list of "scientific" rumors in May jointly released by the Beijing Association for Science and Technology and other institutions recently, there are life rumors about "grounding gas" car refueling, non stick pan coating and other life rumors, as well as "tall" 5G communications, quantum computers and other cutting-edge technology rumors.
At the beginning of this year, under the guidance of the Illegal and Bad Information Reporting Center of the Central Cyberspace Office, the online rumor governance report jointly launched by Sun Yat sen University and Tencent summarized the overall situation of rumors in 2018. The article points out that food safety, medical health, social livelihood and other fields have gradually become the "hardest hit areas" of online rumors.
Focusing on the rumor routine of food safety, the reporter found that it mainly spread food safety risks maliciously, which hit the public fear, for example, coffee has strong carcinogens; Some are the common sense of packaging and health preservation, which induces the public to fall into a cognitive misunderstanding. For example, spinach and tofu together will lead to stones; Some are exaggerating and stirring up old stories. For example, hot balsam pear water and hot lemonade can fight cancer.
Under the network rumor layer upon layer routine, often the middle-aged and old people are easy to become the rumor setters unconsciously. "The middle-aged and elderly people with weak rumor discrimination, low education level and low subjective well-being are more likely to spread rumors," said Zhang Zhi'an, vice president of the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Development Institute of Sun Yat sen University and professor of the School of Communication and Design.
Black industry hidden behind rumors
According to the commonness of rumor content, Feng Ling, an IT analyst, concluded that most online rumor articles often contain words such as "cancer", "toxic" and "death", and also like to use words such as "100%" and "first"; In particular, rumor articles on the theme of health preservation and disease often use false "folk recipes" to fabricate "seasonal rumors" or "popular science knowledge" in the way of exchanging concepts.
The reporter randomly selected several rumor articles that have been officially refuted to try to find out the source of professional journals mentioned in the articles, but it is almost difficult to find them. "Although the content of some articles seems reasonable at first glance, some online rumors will be 'changed', cleverly camouflaged and implanted in them, taking the way of mixed truth and falsehood, generalizing the whole or constantly inferring, even if professional institutions want to verify whether it is scientific. In addition, the text is often mixed with potential marketing behavior, and it is easy to lead users to the wrong path by inducing them layer by layer. ”Wang Sixin, deputy dean of the School of Political Science and Law of Communication University of China, said.
How did the rumor articles that were widely forwarded come into being? "These popular online pseudoscience articles often have a complete black industry chain behind them." Feng Ling revealed to reporters that the contents of these articles were partly captured and amplified from relevant research information, or used some old news for second draft; After the article is published, in addition to purchasing the reading volume in the black market, some platforms will exchange money through the reading volume of users; The subsequent realization mode also involves product promotion, offline activities, and even diversion for some platforms involved in pornography and gambling.
Deception is "reinventing everything"
In recent years, short videos have entered the outbreak period, and some online rumor makers have also taken this opportunity to concoct new forms of rumors that are convenient for video transmission. Internet rumors have emerged to varying degrees on short video platforms such as dithering, fast hand, and micro vision.
For example, in November 2018, there was a production video of fake double yolk eggs spread on Tiaoyin, which received tens of thousands of praise. After verification, it was actually a toy called "Water Baby"; Before that, there was a short video claiming that "there was a female rabies attack and she bit people in the street", which was reprinted by many netizens, but it turned out that the video picture was from the video introducing the film shooting process.
Moreover, webcast has become a new way to spread rumors. In order to earn popularity, some anchors began to plan events and even spread rumors on purpose. There used to be an anchor who "performed to pay" when doing public service in Daliang Mountain, and collected the "donation" after the live broadcast; In 2017, an anchor in Jilin fabricated the number of local flood deaths by using the webcast platform, and lied that the communication network interruption in the disaster area caused by the flood was deliberately blocked by the government to hide the disaster. The next day, the rumor mongering anchor was detained by criminal detention.
There are also some online rumors of "renovation" through new media such as H5. "The H5 page is full of pictures and words, and is accompanied by very infectious music, which describes some rumors vividly and makes it difficult to distinguish true from false, which increases the difficulty of refuting and eliminating rumors," said Feng Ling. (Reporter Li Zhengwei)
