Dynamical behaviors and spatial diffusion in a psychologically realistic rumor spreading model

Abstract

The spread of rumors has caused serious social and economic problems, especially during emergencies. Reducing the harm caused by rumors requires understanding the dynamical mechanism by which they propagate. To include the influence of time-dependent psychological factors, this paper proposes an improved rumor spreading model and derives mean-field equations describing the dynamics of rumor spreading. The psychological factors considered are the attenuation of individual interest, the cumulative effect of memory, and changes in sensory intensity with time. We also obtain the threshold condition of rumor spreading. Numerical simulations are used to verify our theoretical results. It is proved that the extremum of the cumulative effect of memory and the rumor attraction rate are positively correlated with the peak number of rumor spreaders, and negatively with the time required to reach the final rumor size. Time grows geometrically, while sensory intensity grows arithmetically. The initial approval rate of the memory accumulation effect and the stifling mechanism have little effect on the final rumor size. Finally, it is found that increasing the attenuation of interest coefficient reduces the time needed for the rumor to reach its final size.