ICT mediated rumor beliefs and resulting user actions during a community crisis

In the context of Internet and Communications Technology (ICT), this research investigates the acceptance of hate rumor and its consequence during a community crisis situation. Extending prior rumor research for this context, we develop and test a refined model using data collected from victims of a large scale (hate) rumor spread incident. Our data analyses present three main findings. First, during the crisis situation, platform characteristics of media synchronicity and richness of expression affected the likelihood of rumor recipients believing the false rumor to be a true message. Second, rumors received from people with closer social ties were more likely to be believed as true. Third, rumor belief during the crisis was associated with greater intensity of informational and behavioral actions. Our findings provide governments with insights to mitigate the spread of hate rumor especially under community disaster situations. Implications for research and policy are discussed. This paper contributes to the IS literature on rumor theory and its implications by explaining how diverse communication technologies are used in a community crisis, thereby opening new avenue for future research to address the negative consequences of using communication media in the complex ICT mediated world. It shows how media characteristics along with social ties affect the “politics of plausibility”.