One of the toughest jobs in social media communications is chasing down and beating untrue rumours.
Social media has increased the speed and breadth of the traditional rumour mill. But it has also offered us some insights into how and why rumours rumours spread.
The lessons from a recent experiment show that rumours spread because:
1) They have 'believability' - they are plausible because of existing beliefs and prejudices about the subject or topic of the rumour
2) Up to 90% of those who make 'first contact' with the rumour are prepared to believe it, or at the very least, pass it on without a pejorative judgment
3) Every additional 'wave' of people who come into contact with the rumour are increasingly likely to believe it.
A Swedish design company created an image of a strange screw and posted it on Reddit with the verbal implication that it was a new sort of proprietary screw Apple had designed to stop end users from opening their devices.
The institutions that reported on the screw, like blogs and newspapers, acknowledged that it was only a rumour, but all proceeded to discuss the implications if it was true.
But individuals were less circumspect, and more defined in expressing their view. Around 90% of them regarded the screw as a fact. 10% thought it was probably not true.
Each step further from the source - where people discussed or reported the story as it had been framed by others - belief in the truth of the rumour increased.
In this particular example, there were only three steps in turning the falsehood to truth. At its published source on Reddit, the photo was a complete lie. The institutions that first drew attention to the photo (like Yahoo, Macworld and Wired) did acknowledge it's probable lack of veracity. But the next step, where their reports were posted on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, transformed the lie into something mostly believed.
What does that mean for those the rumour harms?
1) The more numerous and deep the weaknesses in your current reputation, the more likely lies and misperceptions will be believed. Fix your reputation first!
2) It takes as little as three steps to turn a misperception into a widely believed truth. So it's unlikely you can stop the initial spread. You simply can't responding as fast as the rumour will spread. So the most important thing is not speed, but conceiving a more beleivable and powerful rebuttal.
3) You can take the same route as the rumour to correct it - using exactly the same techniques (images, emotion, appeal to existing perceptions, authority) to allow the replacement fact to spread. Going direct to the end recipients of the rumour is possible in a social media environment, but repeating a rumour simply helps pass the rumour on to those who hadn't yet heard it (probably far more people than you realise). Messages get their veracity from repetition and authority of those who pass them on, so use the same networks that passed the rumour on in the first place.