Conditional effects of individual judgment heterogeneity in information dissemination

Abstract

The dissemination or spreading of information such as the rumor exists since the beginning of human society. As the collective action, the spreading of information (rumors) has been investigated a great deal in interdisciplinary fields. In the current mobile Internet age, people interact with each other, exchange information, and spreading information (rumors) via social Apps or medias, such as Weibo & Wechat (China) and Facebook & Twitter (USA). Besides of the basic and expanded Susceptible–Infected–Removed (SIR) models, the direct interactions within agents or individuals are proposed as the alternative pathway of modeling information spreading. It is proposed that the attraction of information, individual judgments, and social trust jointly determine the spreading of information. In our model, the heterogeneities of both social trust and individual judgments are introduced into the modeling. The effect of heterogeneity is obvious, based on which we focus on the conditional heterogeneity effects of individual judgment under the social trust heterogeneity. Three patterns can be obtained based on data mining & visualization of simulation outcomes. The first pattern (promotion) states that the heterogeneity of judgments (Judge-SD) promotes the spreading under each level of social trust heterogeneity (Trust-SD); the second pattern (promotion and stabilized) indicates that the heterogeneity of judgments (Judge-SD) promotes it but then the promoting effect does not increase; the third pattern (Weak and Random) means that no clear relationships can be seen.