The politics of rumours

Rumours are a politically explosive communication phenomenon. Dramas from the early modern period to the beginning of the 19th century stage, reflect and comment on it in an illuminating way, and the political power of rumours is ambivalent: they can provoke uprisings, but can also be used deliberately by governments. The political virulence of rumours was already recognised in the early modern period and dramatised in baroque tragedies. In a broad-based study that combines drama analyses based on communication theory with approaches from the history of media, knowledge and the public sphere, Elke Dubbels examines how rumours are presented as communication events in dramas from the mid-17th century to the beginning of the 19th century. Following a system-theoretically inspired concept of the public sphere as "observed observation" (Schlögl), dramas are analysed as a medium for reflecting on the political public sphere. The focus is on the question of how the plays stage rumours and how they relate to the public sphere they portray. It turns out that the dramas examined not only sensitise their readers to the political significance of rumours and distance themselves from them by contrasting them with other models of communication. Rather, in some cases they also participate performatively in the rumour-driven battles of opinion that they depict.