Abstract
Due to the development of social media, the threshold for information dissemination has become lower than ever before. As a special kind of information, rumors are usually harmful and are usually accompanied by a high degree of ambiguity that makes them difficult to immediately identify, but “rumors stop at wise men.” When someone identifies a rumor as false and begins spreading the truth instead, a confrontational relationship obtains between the rumor and the truth that leads to the stifling of the former. Given this, we developed a 2SIH2R model in this study that contains mechanisms of discernment and confrontation in a heterogeneous network to examine the dissemination of the rumor and the truth. By using mean-field equations of the 2SIH2R model, the threshold of the spreading of each can be determined separately in three cases. The results of a numerical simulation show that under the same conditions, the greater is the mechanism of discernment or confrontation, the smaller is the instantaneous maximum influence and the final range of influence of the rumor. It can be also concluded that the earlier release of the truth about the event by the government can significantly control the rumor. Secondly, it is more effective to publish the truth in advance than after the rumor has appeared. Thirdly, it is more important for the government to increase education and improve the ability of citizens to reveal the rumor than to increase the spread of the truth after the rumor occurs. These results can be used to help reduce the harmful effects of rumors.
Highlights
With the advancement of the Internet and social network services (SNS) such as WeChat and Facebook, the speed, efficiency, and range of information dissemination have significantly improved compared with the era of word of mouth
To minimize the damage caused by rumors, it is important to establish a reasonable model to study the process of rumor spreading
We proposed an adjusted model in a generated heterogeneous network, called the 2SIH2R rumorspreading model, based on the traditional SIR model
Summary
With the advancement of the Internet and social network services (SNS) such as WeChat and Facebook, the speed, efficiency, and range of information dissemination have significantly improved compared with the era of word of mouth. Unlike most researches on the spreading process of the rumor using epidemic models, Askarizadeh [26] proposed a method based on game theory to study the spreading process of the rumor This model considers a rumor control mechanism, which is to send antirumor information through the rumor control center, and studies the factors that affect people’s decision-making, including social anxiety, people’s attitude toward rumor/ antirumor, strength of rumor/antirumor, influence of rumor control centers, and participation of people in discussions. We use past research to build a 2SIH2R (spreader1-spreader2-ignorant-hesitant1-stiflers1-stiflers2) model with parallel topology, discernibility mechanism, and confrontation mechanism in a heterogeneous network People in this model are divided into six categories and two kinds of spreaders are simultaneously considered (people who spread the rumor and those who spread the truth).
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