Rumors stoke up hatred for officials, rich, report finds

More than half of rumors spreading in Beijing are those which could stoke hatred toward government officials or the rich, according to a 2013-2014 Beijing society management and development report.

About 64 percent of the rumor samples in the research involved hatred of officials, 58 percent hatred of the rich and 70 percent involved public emergency incidents, the report jointly released on Monday by the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and Social Sciences Academic Press showed.

Rumors spread not only via the Internet, but also passed from mouth to mouth by "aunts," referring to women over 40 years old, the research said. Some 87.2 percent of these rumors were hard to verify.

"The bad image and behavior of government officials have always been a popular concern, and without efficient authoritative release of information, the public tend to believe social sources," Wang Hongwei, an associate professor of public security at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The report found rumors about more sensitive issues and involving more sensational stories that elicit hatred of officials and the rich spread much easier.

A survey conducted by news portal legaldaily.com.cn showed that more than half of online rumors in 2012 were about official corruption, Beijing-based newspaper The Mirror reported on Tuesday.

It is common for people to vent their emotions and dissatisfaction while spreading information without checking its credibility, Wang said, as official clarifications are not always available. But rumors repeated more times often appear more trustworthy, he warned, when in fact they could be more misleading.

On May 28, a woman was brutally murdered by six people at a fast-food restaurant in East China's Shandong Province, and the information immediately sparked heated discussion on the Internet.

A rumor saying the group leader Zhang Lidong drove an expensive car and was the owner of a gold mine with official connections at the local public security bureau spread fast on the Internet.

Before any official information release about the perpetrators, comments based on the rumored information flooded the official microblog accounts of local authorities.

The group turned out to be members of a religious cult. Zhang Lidong had in fact earned his money from a medicine business and drove a Porsche Cayenne to the McDonald's, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

"Instead of dodging rumors involving officials, the government should act immediately to verify the information and make it public," Wang said.

A transparent supervisory mechanism regulating official behavior should also be adopted in an effort to gain social trust, he suggested.

Some 245 rumors out of the total 321 listed by respondents in the research were chosen by them to discuss with others, which suggested that more than 75 percent of people would spread rumors in real life.

China initiated a campaign targeting online rumormongers in August last year, arresting influential Internet celebrities.