Gossip

Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It is one of the oldest and most common menas of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted. The term can also imply that the news is of personal or trivial nature, as opposed to normal converstion.

In the last decade, gossip has been researched in terms of its evolutionary psychology origins. This has found gossip to be an important means by which people can monitor cooperative reputations and so maintain widespread indirect reciprocity. Indirect reciprocity is defined here as "I help you and somebody else helps me". Gossip has also been identified by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary biologist, as aiding social bonding in large groups.
The term is sometimes used to specifically refer to the spreading of dirt and misinformation, as through excited discussion of scandals. Some newspapers carry "gossip columns" which details the social and personal lives of celebrities or of elite members of certain communities.