A social immunity based approach to suppress rumors in online social networks

Abstract

Online social networks (OSNs) connect people around the globe under one virtual society. It helps people gather, communate and share their common interests. But many times, OSNs are also exploited and eventually become a major platform for rumor or false information propagation. Controlling such rumors in OSNs has been the most challenging research interest in recent days. Since OSNs are a platform of collective behavior, we focus on a collective rumor containment approach to control or eradicate rumors. In this paper, an anti-rumor information spreading approach is proposed to contain rumors collectively by following a bio-inspired immunization method called social immunity. First, A competitive information propagation model called competitive cascade (CC) model that spreads rumor and true information simultaneously is defined. This model continuously updates the trustworthiness of individuals in the network on every communication among the participants of OSNs. Then, the initial spreaders of anti-rumors are identified with the help of the intensity of the rumor in the network as well as the individual’s trustworthiness. Finally, a collective rumor containment approach is applied by considering the cost of rumor containment and a rumor intensity threshold. The proposed approach is compared with recent and well-known rumor control approaches and the results show that the proposed approach is effective in eradicating rumors.