Gossip, rumor, political parlor conversations of the Saxon times

The newest article by prof. Bożena Popiołek, entitled “Fear to write, what is going on here…”. Gossip, rumor, political parlor conversations of the Saxon times” has been published in the Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae CracoviensisStudia ad Bibliothecarum Scientiam Pertinentia.

Gossip has been an important element of mass communication for centuries and played a special role in the period of limited access to the mass media. The task of social media is not only to provide information, but also to build specific patterns of behavior, cognitive stereotypes that are accepted by society as certain norms of behavior and ideas about the world. The limited reach of the mass media (handwritten and printed newspapers, written reports) caused a hunger for knowledge and the scarcity of applicable models, hence the popularity of rumors, which became a transmission tool for social communication, and of-ten also an opinion-forming tool.

The entire article can be found in open access at: LINK