For the study, archived discussions concerning rumors on the internet and other computer networks such as BITnet were retrieved. As a rule, each discussion had a minimum of five statements posted over a period of at least two days. The statements were then coded as being one of the following: "prudent", "apprehensive", "authenticating", "interrogatory", "providing information", "belief", "disbelief", "sensemaking", "digressive", or "uncodable". Each rumor discussion was then analyzed based on this coding system. A similar coding system based on statistical analysis was applied to each discussion as a whole, and the aforementioned four-stage pattern of rumor discussion emerged.