In “Rumors have rules,” a recently published article in the Spring 2023 edition of Issues in Science and Technology (and excerpted in The Seattle Times), University of Washington Center for an Informed Public co-founders Emma S. Spiro and Kate Starbird explore how decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant today in a world with social media.
In their article, Spiro, a UW Information School associate professor, and Starbird, a UW Human Centered Design & Engineering associate professor, revisit the 1954 “Seattle windshield pitting epidemic,” an event where residents in Western Washington reported finding unexplained pits, holes and other damage in their car windshields, leading to wide speculation about the cause. It’s “a textbook example of how rumors propagate: a sort of contagion, spread through social networks, shifting how people perceive patterns and interpret anomalies,” they write.
Spiro and Starbird continue: “Certainly, communication has changed dramatically since party-line telephone calls and black-and-white television, but scholarship from that era holds critical insights that are essential to the digital era. The study of rumors, which surged around World War II, is still very relevant.”
- Read more in “Rumors have rules” in Issues in Science and Technology.
- Read more in “Assessing rumors to improve trust and prepare for 2024 elections” in The Seattle Times.
PHOTO: A view of Downtown Seattle in March 1954. (Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives Digital Collection #45564)
