Everywhere there are people there are rumors. Especially in urban areas where social and cultural groups are segregated and rapid change is experienced, rumors flourish. Rumors can be defined as “unverified and instrumentally relevant information statements in circulation that arise in contexts of ambiguity, danger or potential threat and that function to help people make sense and manage risk” (DiFonzo and Bordia 2007).

Rumors contribute to prejudice, discrimination and, in worst cases, violence among communities (Solomos, 2011). Online rumors often create a viral tide transforming a false fact into a presumed reality. The reason for this is that rumors help to project a positive self-image and consolidation of one social group by ascribing negative characteristics to individuals outside this group. As a result, rumors often reinforce the sense of difference between cultural and socio-economic groups, and contribute to the process of establishing an “us” and “them”.

Rumors generally run rife in conflict areas, and have played a key role in igniting episodes of intense violence, from ethnic riots to genocide (Greenhill, 2010). Several of the clashes among communities in urban areas over Europe have, consequently, either started with or have been enhanced by rumors (Solomos, 2011). Social media can also be seen as “echo chambers” of rumors where people’s opinions are reinforced by like-minded voices (Sunstein, 2007), and where this homogeneity is reinforced by information “filter-bubbles” that present information based on earlier searches (Pariser, 2011).

The Good Rumor Project is an interdisciplinary project that explores rumors as a socio-political and cultural phenomenon. The project was commissioned by InSITE, an international public art institution which invites artist to conduct long-term interdisciplinary projects in the public domain which deals with the socially and politically sensitive border area between Mexico and the United States. Curators of InSITE 05 were Osvaldo Sanchez, Ute Meta Bauer, Adriano Pedrosa, Mark Tribe, and Sally Yard.

The Good Rumor Project was conducted in collaboration with Don Sciblimpaglia, Professor of Marketing at San Diego State University; Fiamma Montezemolo, Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Cultural Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera in Tijuana; Yonke Art in Tijuana, Dream Addictive Laboratory, Tijuana and Igor Isaksson, architect.

Two rumors have been constructed by the project group: One about people in Tijuana that is spread in San Diego, and one about people in San Diego that is spread in Tijuana. In contrast to normal rumors, the “good rumors” have been created in dialogue with the actual subjects of the rumors. That is, the rumor about Tijuana was created by people from Tijuana and the rumor about San Diego was created by people from San Diego. 

This was done with the same methods as used in marketing as well as in politics for getting information on how people think about various items and issues: Focus groups. One focus group was conducted in Tijuana and one in San Diego.

The “good rumors” were systematically spread in Tijuana and San Diego through a multifaceted strategy that combines some of the latest and most advanced marketing techniques –viral/word of mouth marketing – with recent sociological research on small-world networks and social network analysis. A few hundred persons from every level of society, who are influential in their respective social networks, have been targeted and contacted by the project group. These socially influential persons – in the project called “nodes” – were then invited to collaborate on the project by spreading the “good rumor” in their respective social network.

The submitted information is fed into a database connected to a an interactive interactive sociogram on the website, where the rumor spreading can be tracked geographically, socio-economically as well as narratively from node to node through the border area. 

InSite_05, San Diego, USA/Tijuana, Mexico; Continental Breakfast, Muzeum, Ljubljana, Slovenia; HABITAT – Baltic Biennale of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland; Soft Manipulation, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg; Appendix 3, Automata, Ljubljana, Slovenia; 12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07, National Museum, Wroclaw, Poland; Goethe Institute, Dakar, Senegal; Insa Art Space of the Arts Council Korea, Seoul, Korea; Fournos Center for Digital Culture, Athens; Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, and Soft Manipulation: Who is afraid of the new now? 3,14 - Art Foundation for Contemporary Art in Bergen. Norway.
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DiFonzo, N., Bordia, P. (2007). Rumor, gossip and urban legends. Diogenes  54 (1):19–35.

Greenhill, K., Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, 2010).

Solomos, J. Race, Rumors and Riots: Past, Present and Future, (2011) Sociological Research Online, 16 (4) 20.

Sunstein, C. R. (2007). Ideological amplification. Constellations, 14(2), 273-279.

Sunstein, C. R. (2001). Republic.com. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
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