An Empirical Investigation of Rumoring: Anticipating Disaster Under Conditions of Uncertainty

Although a great deal of attention has been given to the conditions which give rise to rumors, the conditions necessary for transmission, and processes of rumor transmission, little attention has been paid to the factors that distinguish between rumorers and non-rumorers, as well as rumor believers and non-believers. Employing data from a survey of Los Angeles residents following a widely-felt, but non-damaging earthquake that occurred during a heightened period of public attention to earthquake prediction, this analysis focuses on the linkages between a number of social and contextual factors to identify rumorers and rumor believers. Since scientific earthquake prediction is still a developing field (Lindh, 19911, the general public often has to interpret complex scientific information relating to earthquake forecasting in meaningful ways in order to decide upon action alternatives. Often, competing definitions of earthquake predictions circulate within the same social circles, producing uncertainty and ambiguity about the likelihood of a future earthquake. In such situations, widespread rumoring has been found to occur (Turner, Nigg, & Paz, 1986; Edwards, 1991; Tierney, forthcoming).