WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT

What happens when gossip—one of the most traditionally intimate forms of communication—“goes public” on electronic bulletin boards? We explore how impersonal trust, generated by the mode of transmission and the social context in which it occurs, alters gossip in particular and observable ways. Drawing upon exchanges about the entertainment industry that are representative of gossip on electronic bulletin boards, we find that members draw upon a variety of resources that shift gossip's verifiability from reliance on intimate social bonds and assurances of truthfulness to overt negotiations that emphasize honesty. We also observe how status and power hierarchies surrounding information are influenced by negotiated honesty. We conclude with some observations about the impact of technologies on the nature of social bonds.

[1]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Small Groups and Culture Creation: The Idioculture of Little League Baseball Teams , 1979 .

[2]  Joshua Meyrowitz,et al.  No sense of place , 1985 .

[3]  Mark S. Granovetter.  Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness , 1985, American Journal of Sociology.

[4]  D. Boden,et al.  The Past as Resource , 1983 .

[5]  M. Gluckman,et al.  Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits: Gossip and Scandal , 1963, Current Anthropology.

[6]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay , 1976 .

[7]  Marjorie Harness Goodwin,et al.  he‐said‐she‐said: formal cultural procedures for the construction of a gossip dispute activity , 1980 .

[8]  Sissela Bok,et al.  Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation , 1982 .

[9]  R. LaRose,et al.  Electronic Bulletin Boards and “Public Goods” Explanations of Collaborative Mass Media , 1993 .

[10]  Ronald Wardhaugh,et al.  How conversation works , 1986 .

[11]  W. Dale Dannefer,et al.  The C.B. Phenomenon, A Sociological Appraisal , 1979 .

[12]  W. Dannefer,et al.  Language and Community , 1977 .

[13]  V. Derlega,et al.  Privacy and self-disclosure in social relationships. , 1977 .

[14]  J. Gamson.  Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America , 1994 .

[15]  Raymond S. Nickerson,et al.  Electronic Bulletin Boards: A Case Study of Computer-Mediated Communication , 1994, Interact. Comput..

[16]  F. Koenig,et al.  Rumor in the Marketplace: The Social Psychology of Commercial Hearsay , 1985 .

[17]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Network Nation: Human Communication Via Computer , 1979 .

[18]  G. Fine.  Popular Culture and Social Interaction: Production, Consumption, and Usage , 1977 .

[19]  Donna Eder,et al.  THE STRUCTURE OF GOSSIP: OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS ON COLLECTIVE EXPRESSION AMONG ADOLESCENTS* , 1991 .

[20]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[21]  Christine Ogan,et al.  Listserver communication during the gulf war: What kind of medium is the electronic bulletin board? , 1993 .

[22]  S. Shapiro.  The Social Control of Impersonal Trust , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[23]  Bernard Barber,et al.  The Logic and Limits of Trust , 1983 .

[24]  N. Denzin.  Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation , 1992 .

[25]  F. Jameson.  Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism , 1992 .

[26]  Deborah Jones,et al.  Gossip: Notes on women's oral culture , 1980 .

[27]  N. Besnier.  Information withholding as a manipulative and collusive strategy in Nukulaelae gossip , 1989, Language in Society.