rumor

Rumor is a human-made mechanism for circulating unverified claims about events, people, or conditions. It operates through informal social channels — face-to-face transmission, messaging networks, and mass media — where each relay may alter the claim's details while preserving its core assertion. Rumor persists because it fills information vacuums: when official sources are slow, silent, or distrusted, communities generate their own narratives to make sense of uncertainty. The mechanism carves three parameters: (1) unverified content — the claim cannot be confirmed by authoritative source at time of transmission; (2) social propagation — it spreads through interpersonal or mediated channels rather than official publication; (3) adaptive mutation — details change across retellings while the core assertion endures. Rumor differs from misinformation in that it originates as collective sense-making rather than deliberate deception, and from gossip in that it addresses public concerns rather than private conduct.\n\n[formal: rumor | substrate: behavior | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]