Trust Crisis under Sorcery Rumor in Qing Dynasty (1768):Analysis of Soul Stealing
NIU Jing
Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ›› 2013, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (7) : 78-86.
Trust Crisis under Sorcery Rumor in Qing Dynasty (1768):Analysis of Soul Stealing
In 1768, China was experiencing a flourishing age of Qing dynasty. How could rumors be madly
spread and why the governmental purge of rumor turned out to be a farce finally? Actually, the sorcery
rumors revealed a hidden logic that the social panic was the essential reason for spreading rumor.
Meanwhile, the local officers who had lost the civilians’ trust could do nothing but cope with rumors
passively and dance to the civilians’ tune, which in return made the dominator of the country interpret
rumors as a political plot. Therefore, the fear of sorceries with a potential threaten finally turned into an
actual struggle for survival.
This article is the result of project “The Empirical Research on the Media and Political Trust in the
Process of Democratization”, supported by the Fund of the Social Science & Humanity Research for
Young Scholars, Department of Education (Project number: 10YJC860034).
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