On the evening of June 1, 2021, Prof. Li Dayong, a professor of Northwest University of Political Science and Law, was invited by our students to give a lecture on humanities and scientific literacy entitled Why Rumors Confuse People - The Generation of Rumors and Their Regulation, and nearly 500 students watched the lecture live through the nail platform.

At the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Li Dayong introduced two rumors, KFC and Devil Satan's Curse, and pointed out that rumors are divided into four categories: political rumors, economic rumors, cultural rumors and social rumors, and gave students a detailed and vivid explanation on the generation and characteristics of social rumors and the methods of regulating them.

The first part of the lecture was a basic overview of rumor-related concepts. Professor Li first introduced some characteristics of rumors, namely, information, uncertainty, publicness and communication. He pointed out that the essence of rumors is still a kind of information, which is an unconfirmed social opinion or rumor without clear factual basis, and it is difficult for the public to distinguish its truth or falsity in a short period of time. At the same time, Professor Li points out that compared to the previous point-to-point spread of word-of-mouth, the development of rumors in the Internet information era is often massive. After being exposed to rumors, people often adopt multiple relay transmission methods to continuously add their own understanding of the rumors and exaggerate them, making the information distorted in the process of spreading, which has serious consequences. Secondly, Professor Li introduces the ways of rumor generation. With the help of Allport's rumor formula: rumor = importance of the event  ambiguity of the event, he analyzes how rumors are generated from three levels: people's insecurity about the social environment, the rational or irrational behaviors of rumor spreaders, and the limitations of the believers' own knowledge, and points out that rumors are collective crystallization, and people are both perpetrators and victims in rumors. It is also pointed out that rumors are the result of collective work, and people are both the perpetrators and the victims of rumors.

The second part of the lecture dealt with the balance between rumor and freedom of speech. Professor Li borrowed the view of the U.S. Supreme Court that in order to protect freedom of speech, we need to protect false claims and pointed out that the freedom of speech protected by the Constitution not only protects mainstream opinions, but also protects minority, marginal, or even false and non-malicious speech. The Constitution protects not only mainstream opinions, but also minority, marginal, unorthodox, and even wrong speech without malice. On the one hand, our current legislation's blanket rejection of rumors can shape a healthy online environment, but on the other hand, it can make people overly censor their speech before they publish it, thus reducing their willingness to speak out, which is not conducive to the state's understanding of public opinion. In short, there is a tension between rumor regulation and freedom of expression, and a balance must be sought between the two to achieve better results.

In the third part of the lecture, Prof. Li offers his views on how rumors should be regulated. He pointed out that there are three models of rumor regulation: the first one is the moral regulation model. On the one hand, an effective legal order has not yet been formed, and on the other hand, various values are impacting the traditional moral constraints on people, so the constraints on cyberspace should combine law and morality, and improve the moral quality and rationality of the public. The second one is the technical regulation mode. The first is the use of crawler technology, but its threat to personal privacy leakage is greater; the second is big data analysis of rumors and cleaning of different forms of rumors; the third is big data application of rumors and correlation analysis of rumors. The third one is the legal regulation model of rumors. If a rumor violates the civil rights and interests of a specific person, he or she can defend his or her legitimate rights and interests by filing a tort lawsuit; if it involves public interests, the government will then carry out administrative management; if it has the consequence of seriously disturbing the social order or is dangerous, it should be considered to be restrained by means of criminal punishment. Finally, Professor Li points out that a multi-party cooperation mechanism for rumor management should be established, and the government should take up the main role in regulating online rumors, clarify the subjects of regulation, do a good job of information disclosure, strengthen the protection of citizens' right to information and freedom of expression, and change the position of treating rumors from passive to active, and the post-event regulation of rumors should be changed to pre-absorption. At the same time, network service providers should take up the responsibility of supervising social subjects, prohibit transmission and do a good job of eliminating rumors found spreading on the platform, and actively do the incidental obligation of eliminating the impact and restoring the status quo ante. Professor Li also believes that the process of eliminating rumors is a process for the government to establish authority and increase social trust, and to actively guide the public to overcome ignorance with science and make the public more rational. In the process of rumor management, the government and other information subjects should jointly share the right to regulate social information, and different subjects should clearly divide their work among themselves and do a good job of assuming responsibility within their own duties.

The lecture talked about the claims behind rumors and other rights from the generation and dissemination of rumors, and profoundly analyzed the many reasons for the proliferation of rumors in today's society. During the lecture, Mr. Li cited many historical allusions and listed many social rumors, vividly and specifically showing the process of rumor generation for the students. At the same time, he explained the mechanism of rumors and the way to solve them from the perspective of the government, network service providers and the public, so that the students could learn the legal and social theories of rumor control and feel the charm of the discipline of law.