Effect of Global and Local Refutation Mechanism on Rumor Propagation in Heterogeneous Network

Abstract

In the process of rumors propagation, the behavior of individuals to propagation or refutation is not only influenced by the surrounding global environment but also the local environment. In this paper, a modified rumor propagation model is proposed considering the global and local effects of the rumor refutation mechanism and the activity rate of individuals in a heterogeneous network, and the dynamics process of the rumor propagation is derived by using the mean-field equation. Combining theoretical proving and simulation analysis, it shows that the critical threshold of rumor propagation has a great relationship with individual activity rates and global and local effects of the rumor refutation mechanism. The greater the government’s efforts to refute rumors, the lower the critical threshold of rumor propagation and the smaller the final rumor size. While relatively, people are much more likely to believe the global rumor refutation information taken with official information, local rumor refutation information has little influence on rumor propagation.

Keywords

• rumor propagation
• refutation mechanism
• critical threshold
• activity rate
• heterogeneous network