Correlation and trust mechanisms-based rumor propagation model in complex social networks

Abstract

Abstract In real life, the process of rumor propagation is influenced by many factors. The complexity and uncertainty of human psychology make the diffusion model more challenging to depict. In order to establish a comprehensive propagation model, in this paper, we take some psychological factors into consideration to mirror rumor propagation. Firstly, we use the Ridenour model to combine the trust mechanism with the correlation mechanism and propose a modified rumor propagation model. Secondly, mean-field equations which describe the dynamics of the modified SIR model on homogenous and heterogeneous networks are derived. Thirdly, a steady-state analysis is conducted for the spreading threshold and the final rumor size. Fourthly, we investigate rumor immunization strategies and obtain immunization thresholds. Next, simulations on different networks are carried out to verify the theoretical results and the effectiveness of the immunization strategies. The results indicate that the utilization of trust and correlation mechanisms leads to a larger final rumor size and a smaller terminal time. Moreover, different immunization strategies have disparate effectiveness in rumor propagation.