Fighting rumors by publicizing them in vivid, high-profile locations is, to say the least, a surprising tactic. It’s hard to imagine someone victimized by workplace rumors summarizing them and posting them on the lunchroom wall. The conventional wisdom about rumors is to take the high road and not respond. When John McCain, during the 2000 Republican primaries, was plagued with rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate child, for the most part he opted not to engage with them at all. Why would anyone want to broadcast negative claims about themselves?

And yet new research into the science of rumors suggests Obama’s approach may be a sounder strategy - and the reasons why it makes sense suggest that we misunderstand both how rumors work and why they exist.

…

People are rather specific about which rumors they share, and with whom, researchers have found: They tend to spread rumors to warn friends of potential trouble, or otherwise help them, while remaining mum if it would be harmful to spread a given rumor in a certain context or to a certain person.

It’s not just altruism: Rumors can build status for the person who spreads them. The psychologists John L. Shelton and Raymond S. Sanders, in documenting the impact of a murder of an undergraduate on the Ohio State University campus in 1972 on the student body, found that those with access to “inside information” about the crime and the administration’s response were instantly granted higher social status. So simply possessing - or being seen as possessing - potentially useful information can serve in and of itself as a motivation to spread rumors.

…

Other than denying a rumor that’s true, perhaps the biggest mistake one can make, DiFonzo and other researchers say, is to adopt a “no comment” policy: Numerous studies have shown that rumors thrive in environments of uncertainty. Considering that rumors often represent a real attempt to get at the truth, the best way to fight them is to address them in as comprehensive a manner as possible.

Anthony Pratkanis, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies persuasion and propaganda, says that an effective rebuttal will be more than a denial - it will create a new truth, including an explanation of why the rumor exists and who is benefiting from it.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: LRDP-Resistance Media
Date: Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 10:44 AM
Subject: [counterlrdpcoalition] From the UCSC Tree Sit: Statement on Feb. 24 Incident

To all those concerned,

As you may have heard, on February 24th, some kind of protest took place at the home of a UCSC researcher who experiments on animals. Hyped-up news articles and administrative messages on campus have led
some people to associate this protest with the Tree-Sit on Science Hill. We wish to take this opportunity to make it clear that the tree-sit is NOT affiliated.

The tree-sit uses civil disobedience as a way of drawing attention to the issues of expansion, and physically preventing trees from being cut down. While many of us are concerned with the University’s plan to replace animal habitats with animal testing facilities, we are focusing on the long term impacts that the university’s planned construction will have on life in Santa Cruz and the forest in upper campus.

Yours in resistance,
Science Hill tree-sit organizers and supporters

Thank you for this clarification. I look forward to seeing a public condemnation of the events that took place on the 24th from you, preferably with a list of names of people for whom you are speaking.

Dave Kliger

Dave,
Thank you for your comment. I will pass on your gratitude to the people who wrote the statement, as well as your suggestion. In the mean time, I look forward to seeing the University administration publicly condemn the use of pepper spray, pressure point pain-compliance, and baton-beating used by the UC Police against non-violent campus protests since 2005, preferably with a list of the law enforcement officers involved in those events.

Jennifer Charles

Since beginning its campaign against college students in February, the RIAA has sent out 4,157 prelitigation settlement letters to 160 different schools in ten separate waves.

The schools targeted run the gamut. There are large state schools like Ohio State University, the University of Texas - Austin, and the University of Tennessee. There are also a handful of small liberal arts colleges on the list, including Swarthmore College, evangelical Christian school Bethel University in Minnesota, Gettysburg College, and Carleton College. And the elite schools in the US are well represented, too: Stanford, Northwestern, MIT, and the aforementioned Ivy League schools have all received missives from the RIAA. But not Harvard.

There may be another factor at work here: hostility towards the RIAA’s campaign on the part of Harvard Law School professors Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, who run the law school’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Responding to the RIAA’s claim that its litigation strategy has “invigorated a meaningful conversation on college campuses about music theft, its consequences and the numerous ways to enjoy legal music,” the profs called on Harvard to not betray the “trust and privacy” of its students.

“The university has no legal obligation to deliver the RIAA’s messages. It should do so only if it believes that’s consonant with the university’s mission,” wrote Nesson and Palfrey. “[The RIAA seems] to be engaging in a classic tactic of the bully facing someone much weaker: threatening such dire consequences that the students settle without the issue going to court. The issue is that the university should not be carrying the industry’s water in bringing lawsuits.”

Should the RIAA decide to send prelitigation settlement letters to Harvard, chances are good that 1) the letters will not be passed on, and 2) some of the best and brightest at Harvard Law School will get involved in a big way. That doesn’t look too appealing, especially when the campaign isn’t going as smoothly as the RIAA would like.

We get this a lot—”Jesus Fuck! I got my order today and y’all used Styrofoam peanuts for packaging! OMFG! Don’t you know those destroy the environment and everything fucking else?! Explain this quick, or I’m never ordering from you again!” Yes, we know the limitless evil of Styrofoam peanuts, and we’re glad you are concerned as well, but we would never, ever buy them for packaging. But, we do have several places we dumpster them from on a regular basis that keeps us stocked with them 365 days a year, and they are the best cushioning material. By dumpstering them, of course, we are not contributing to any more being made, and also reduce the use of other material we’d need in their place. If you really want to help reduce the damage of Styrofoam peanuts, you can send them back to us for re-use—shipping will be cheap ;).

More than twenty thousand [greenpeace members] wrote, called, and sent cards to Steve Jobs, asking him to green your Apples. Because of you, he listened, and just announced a greener Apple. Apple has agreed to peel toxic chemicals like Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), out of their product line by 2008. Apple’s new commitment to environmental transparency and the phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range are genuine steps forward.

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.

Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA’s effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces.

In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA’s video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.

“1 of every 8 couples married last year met online.”

In what animal welfare advocates are describing as a “historic advance,†Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, said yesterday that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.

The company said that it would also favor suppliers of chickens that use gas, or “controlled-atmospheric stunning,†rather than electric shocks to knock birds unconscious before slaughter. It is considered a more humane method, though only a handful of slaughterhouses use it.

The goal for the next few months, Burger King said is for 2 percent of its eggs to be “cage free,†and for 10 percent of its pork to come from farms that allow sows to move around inside pens, rather than being confined to crates. The company said those percentages would rise as more farmers shift to these methods and more competitively priced supplies become available.

The cage-free eggs and crate-free pork will cost more, although it is not clear how much because Burger King is still negotiating prices, Steven Grover, vice president for food safety, quality assurance and regulatory compliance, said. Prices of food at the chain’s restaurants will not be increased as a result.