Research On The Regulation Of Rumors In The Context Of The Internet

Called as “the oldest media in the world” by Jean-Noel Kapferer,rumors generated with the emerging of language.From the ancient time till now,rumors are widespread and widely disseminated in social life from the tale that set afoot for a peasant rebellion in Qin Dynasty to the recent canard of suicidal fans on celebrity's new romance.One the other hand,rumors cannot be simply defined as false information without textual research since rumors that processed or disseminated on purpose are often more tendentious and provocative,causing instability of the society.The unique feature of rumor and its dissemination mechanism make refuting less effective.With the development of society,especially the progress of network information technology,social network is highly bound to personal life,while private media and Vmeti(mircomedia)has become part of people's lives.The trend of We-media granted a new feature to rumor—Internet,replacing word of mouth,booklet,leaflets and other conventional means,became a new way of spreading rumors.Internet rumor also emerged.Internet rumor cannot be simply seen as rumor spread out through the Internet.In other words,Rumors + Internet ? Internet rumors.The Internet does not work as media carriers,but also generate and aggravate rumors.It was also not uncommon to see public events caused by Internet rumors.Thus,there is a realistic need to analyze the regulation of rumor.This dissertation analyzes the regulation of rumor under the context of Internet era with the aim of providing feasible guidance and basis to reduce the social impact of rumors and thus,effectively control and regulate rumors.This dissertation is composed by six parts:The first part offers general introduction on rumors.The author first defines the concept of rumor — talk or opinion created without factual foundation but was fabricated and spread by certain means.A brief analysis on Internet rumor under the context of Internet era and the conventional rumor disseminated through the Internet was followed;The second part mainly concerns rumor-related cases with focus on the number of cases,the geographical distribution and the causes of cases,providing basic support for the subsequent elaboration on theory and rumor regulation;Chapter 3 adopts the normative analysis as research methodology and takes the current regulations,laws,administrative regulations and normative documents in China as research object to analyze relevant law application and existing issues;Chapter 4 mainly discusses the controversial issues of rumor regulation,such as the definition of "false information",the public attributes of on-line community;the subject of regulation of rumors and the actual effect of real name system is discussed from the author's perspective;In the fifth part,a comparison on foreign rumor management is conducted to summarize good practices and experience of rumor regulation aboard,offering reference for China's own rumor regulation;The sixth part proposes feasible policy recommendations on the regulatory process of Internet rumors for each stage.Finally,the dissertation ends with a conclusion.