Page 72 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

56 Rhetoric

not reinforced by evidence of any kind; in fact, it is often most potent when
it cannot be traced back to an original source. We ’ ve probably all been
subject to hurtful rumors at some point in our lives, and therefore know
that what makes them so maddening is that once they are in circulation,
they take on a life of their own and can become nearly impossible to dis-

prove by rational means. Rationality is irrelevant when people find it more
titillating or interesting to blindly believe something is true rather than
to painstakingly search for reasonable evidence to support or negate the
claim. Institutions which have an investment in securing people ’ s attention
and assent, such as political parties and media corporations, know this, and
disseminate rumors as a rhetorical method for altering the public dis-
course. For instance, in the 2000 Republican presidential primary cam-
paign, many voters in South Carolina found anonymous leafl ets under
their windshield wipers that “ revealed ” Senator John McCain had fathered
an illegitimate child with an African American woman (in actuality, he had
adopted a child from Mother Theresa ’ s orphanage in Bangladesh). Drawing
as it did on deep - seated racial prejudices still lingering in the Deep South,
the rumor proved more scandalously enthralling and therefore more
believable than fact. McCain lost the South Carolina primary, and the
presidential nomination, to George W. Bush. With the emergence of the
Internet as a channel of information available to most Americans, rumor

spreading has become even more efficient. In the 2008 presidential
election, a false rumor that Senator Barack Obama was a Muslim appeared
in millions of e - mail inboxes, and according to polls, successfully con-
vinced 13 percent of Americans of its veracity, many of whom cited

Obama ’ s religious affiliation as a reason they did not vote for him in the
primary election (although despite this, he did manage to gain his party ’ s
nomination).
What makes this case unique is that Obama chose to combat the rumor
by using his enemies ’ medium against them: his campaign built a website
that offered refutations to the rumors, and encouraged visitors to the site
to upload their online address books and send viral e - mails – essentially
“ truth rumors ” – to their friends. Obama recognized that information
technology has changed the way people experience public discourse. Before
the Internet and cable news boom of the 1990s, it was considered easier to
divide information sources according to expectations of reliability and
trustworthiness: tabloid shows and newspapers provided sensational enter-
tainment, while the news broadcasts of the major networks aspired toward
objective and unbiased reportage. But these boundaries are becoming