Urban Legends

The nature of authenticity on the Web today is no different than the authenticity of numerous and varied stories throughout history. Recall the legends of near mythical people where fact and fiction blend into a single story. Daniel Boone is one good example of this type of truth flexibility. Interestingly, the Daniel Boone Homestead website’s history page performs a little media psychology analysis on Boone's legend. In particular, the site observed, “In biographies, literature, and art, the frontiersman was subject to the whims and personal agendas of writers and artists, rendering it difficult to separate the man from the myth.” This was the early 1800s.

Urban legends today have far more reach and immediacy than early American frontier stories. With regard to the Internet as a new and increasingly dominant information source, there are two dynamics that must be recognized:

1. Information Explosion: The shear volume of information available and exchanged over the Internet is immense. It is often difficult to determine what is true and what is false, the degrees of accuracy, and the subtle and overt manipulation of information.
   
2. Abundance of Experts: Anyone can post information on any viewpoint claiming almost any level of expertise—deserved or not.

Biases are present in many forms and on all sides of information exchange. The creator and writer of the information, the reader and consumer of the information, and other parties who review, edit, and comment on the content all have their own biases. The nature of these biases have been described from a psychological perspective in many ways including Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957), which stated that people will seek consistency in information to become more conformable with their existing beliefs. Consistency in a perspective can be found in the massive amounts of easily accessible information in the Internet  that can be compiled to confirm practically any side of any issue

The Future of Urban Legends

As Media Psychology students entering the second decade of the 21st Century, we have an opportunity to frame discussion around authenticity and the creation, confirmation, or debunking of new Urban Legends. While it is important to understand psychological theory behind why behaviors and beliefs occur, it is also important to understand the role personal experience, education, motivation, spiritual underpinnings, and social relationships have in the search for truth in this vast maze of information called the Internet.

The framing of the discussion and perhaps the creation of a new methodology must take into account the bias factor of every site including so called "fact-checker" sites. The variations of stories, legends, and facts must be accounted for in a simple to understand, science-based approach. Note that one early version of this methodology and communication system is the Snopes color bullet ratings.

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Reference

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row & Peterson.