Contagion and Conviction: Rumor and Gossip in American Culture

In recent years, scholarly and political discourses have increasingly tended to rhetorically conflate the circulation of information and the circulation of viral pathogens. Rumor and gossip are routinely taken to be “contagious” (Franks and Attia) and the massive circulation of information in the public sphere is said to be akin to “viral events” (Nahon and Hemsley). Trapped within the precarious logic of absolute metaphors (cf. Blumenberg 14), scholarly and political discourses have, in turn..