amyburple
8th September 2008, 11:22
Gossip is idle talk or rumor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumor), especially about the personal or private affairs of others.
While gossip forms one of the oldest and most common means of spreading and sharing facts and views, it also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information) thus transmitted. The term also carries implications that the news so transmitted (usually) has a personal or trivial nature. Compare conversation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation).
Some people commonly understand gossip as meaning the spreading of dirt and misinformation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation), as (for example) through excited discussion of scandals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal). Some newspapers carry "gossip columns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_columnist)" which detail the social and personal lives of celebrities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity) or of élite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitism)communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community).[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)][dubious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disputed_statement) – discuss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gossip#Dubious)] members of certain
Gossip has recently come to the attention of academia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research) as a fruitful avenue of study, particularly in light of its relationship to both overt and implicit power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_%28sociology%29) structures. (Compare discourse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse).)[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]
Researchers studying computer networks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network) and distributed computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing) have recently begun to develop software based on what they term gossip protocols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol). These mimic social networks as a way to carry out distributed computing tasks that can be hard to solve in other ways. (The term epidemic protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_protocol) is also used in this context.)
While gossip forms one of the oldest and most common means of spreading and sharing facts and views, it also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information) thus transmitted. The term also carries implications that the news so transmitted (usually) has a personal or trivial nature. Compare conversation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation).
Some people commonly understand gossip as meaning the spreading of dirt and misinformation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation), as (for example) through excited discussion of scandals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal). Some newspapers carry "gossip columns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_columnist)" which detail the social and personal lives of celebrities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity) or of élite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitism)communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community).[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)][dubious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disputed_statement) – discuss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gossip#Dubious)] members of certain
Gossip has recently come to the attention of academia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research) as a fruitful avenue of study, particularly in light of its relationship to both overt and implicit power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_%28sociology%29) structures. (Compare discourse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse).)[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]
Researchers studying computer networks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network) and distributed computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing) have recently begun to develop software based on what they term gossip protocols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol). These mimic social networks as a way to carry out distributed computing tasks that can be hard to solve in other ways. (The term epidemic protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_protocol) is also used in this context.)