Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Abdolrahim Qaseminejad ¹
• Reza Zomorodi ²
• Abdolkarim Khayami ³

¹ Ph.D. student in Communication Sciences, Islamic Azad University Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran.

² Master of Islamic Studies, Culture and Communication, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran.

³ Assistant Professor Faculty of Islamic Studies, Culture and Communication, Imam Sadegh University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Since its creation, media coverage has always struggled with a category known as rumors. But with the spread of social media, a new and, of course, more prone place for spreading rumors has been created, which in some countries, including Iran is more aggressive for reasons such as the lack of official information. The present study intends to determine the typology, origin, level of prevalence, and prevalence of rumors through the human observation of news agencies, telegram messengers, Instagram social network, and Twitter, from the time of announcing the outbreak of corona in Iran on February 22, 2017, to April 20, 2016. Analyze Iranian society. According to investigations, half of the Corona rumours were devoted to rumours that provoke public sentiment, spread rumours against the government, and exaggerate the number of Corona patients and victims. Other categories, such as gossip against the armed forces and gossip about methods of transmitting, preventing, and treating coronas, are in the next category. Considering the effect of cyberspace rumors on false arousal of emotions and public opinion and its psychological and social consequences, in the present study, an attempt has been made to use the concept of news literacy, which is in fact a subset of the concept of media literacy. Talking to experts in the field of news and modern news media, the reasons for the relative prevalence and high number of cyberspace rumors in Iran and policies and ways out of the current situation should also be mentioned.

Keywords

• social media
• fake news
• telegram
• twitter
• instagram