By: tom

tom — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:38:22 +0000

@Steve – amazing vid!

By: tom

tom — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:33:14 +0000

@James – thanks! I feel considerably informed, and that you put Vaughan’s original post in exactly the right context
A side interest of mine is exactly why we find some stories satisfying (such that we want to believe and/or re-tell them). You refer to the intellectual tension of combining familiar elements in paradoxical or unfamiliar way (Man bites dog, paris hilton finds god etc), but it isn’t the case that *any* paradoxical combination is satisfying. The “Don’t worry be happy” singer who kills himself is a good example of a story which seems to satisfy because it looks “inevitable” in retrospect
William Goldman, in “Adventures in the Screen Trade” (highly recommended, btw), says something like “A good story is one that builds to a suprising and inevitable conclusion”

By: Jeff Wise

Jeff Wise — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:34:22 +0000

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Fortean Times, which essentially is a journal of exactly this kind of question. It’s less about “Is There a Loch Ness Monster?” than “How did people start to believe in the Loch Ness Monster, and why do they persist?”

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 02:23:58 +0000

And to bring this full circle, a reminder of the Bobby McFerrin/structure of music video posted here last year. (Bobby still looks alive in this one!)
http://vimeo.com/5732745

By: James Hansen

James Hansen — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:38:55 +0000

Actually, there is a huge body of empirical work that relates to this, but by introducing the theme of gossip you are, ah, conflating in the wrong direction.
The specific rumor mechanism – at least as it relates to the nice McFerrin story – is precisely that of “news” and is identical to the most classic of all news headlines: “Man bites dog”.
There are as many definitions of news as there are journalists – or perhaps it would be wiser to say, as there are editors, since the ability to actually identify news and reduce it to an effective headline are the fundamental skills for advancement in that profession and not everyone possesses them.
Most of these definitions agree that news in the journalistic sense contains certain specific elements. It’s useful to note first that “importance” is not among these, at least not necessarily. A classic in corporate press offices, for instance, is the circumstance where the Chief of Marketing comes down and wants a press release issued because he is going to spend $20 million opening a new marketing channel and he knows this is important. It is, but it’s not news, and unless an “angle” can be found its not going to make the papers.
News is not even necessarily “new”. The man bites dog story still reappears regularly, ideally dressed in a slightly different sauce each time. A fairly recent British example for instance had a blind man biting his guide dog.
At any rate, most definitions of news involve the “intellectual” tension that arises from combining familiar elements in an unfamiliar or paradoxical way: the man biting the dog and the “Get Happy” man who kills himself.
Apples that make you sick, SUVs that melt icecaps and cause the oceans to rise, a saintly President who sneaks cigarettes and Paris Hilton finding God are other examples. The familiarity of the elements is vital, a reason “personalities” have become necessary to journalism. The tension-producing factor that links these elements is commonly, but not necessarily, simple incongruity.
There are a few other vital elements, though they may not be immediately obvious outside of the news business. One that will not come into the minds of non-professionals is that news is short. If the heart of the matter cannot be expressed in just a handful of words, it is not news – it may be information, it may be many other things, but it’s not news.
It is also not strictly necessary that news be true, though professional pride requires that the effort be made. The sharp distinction between news and rumors is a largely modern phenomenon and seems to bear within it the idea that information printed on paper or at least on a “reputable” website is possibly true, while things merely said from one person to another more easily may not be.
The modern neatness of the distinction may arise from the huge efforts made by the warring nations in the two World Wars – and since – to control what their citizens said to each other, but we are getting slightly off the track. In realistic terms, the only obvious feature distinguishing “news” from “rumor” is the claim of authority made for the first as opposed to the second – a very largely artificial distinction.
Non-professionals may not quite recognize the implicit definition of “news” in all this because they are used to seeing many other kinds of content in their newspapers and news programs: worthy and useful things, “policy” and “analysis” for instance – the things working journalists in the States call “thumb-suckers”…
This comment has to stop somewhere and so it may be appropriate to point out in conclusion that there is one absolute definition of news that is at least implicitly – and usually explicitly – accepted in the business of journalism: “News is what the public wants to read”. Everything else is “editorial policy” and thumb-sucking.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:41:27 +0000

Chip and Dan Heath have done some of this work for a business-school environment (i.e., http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287); they deal largely with marketing, but urban legends, etc. also figure in their research.

Comments on: Towards an aesthetics of urban legends

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