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Rumours and gossip are often thought to be trivial, but as the above examples suggest, their content may be connected to matters of life and death for individuals and communities. The question of what rumours and gossip are, and how they disseminate, are not new to social scientists. This chapter aims to elaborate on the question of how rumours and gossip disseminate by examining their distinctive communicative and social psychological qualities. The chapter begins with a discussion of some key aspects of gossip, and suggests that it can be considered a specific genre of communication, with associated pragmatic qualities of the kind discussed in Chapter 5. We then consider some of the common methods used to study the transmission of rumours, and this allows a formulation of some of the differences between rumour and gossip, in particular concerning how rumours spread (relating to a "viral" metaphor of the spread of cultural ideas discussed in Chapters 4 and 11), and their connection to social sense-making (discussed in connection with social representations and social influence, in Chapter 4). The final section highlights some parallels between the way in which rumours spread and other forms of culturally recurrent beliefs such as religion (see Chapter 12 for a contrasting view of some connections between religion and communication). These parallels emphasise their cognitive and emotional qualities, and relevant cultural and contextual factors.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230297616_9

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