Rumor Evolution in Social Networks
Yichao Zhang, Shi Zhou, Jihong Guan, Shuigeng Zhou

TL;DR
This paper investigates how rumors evolve during social network spreading, showing that modifications by individuals often lead to the original rumor losing influence, which impacts understanding rumor dynamics.
Contribution
It introduces a model of rumor evolution considering individual modifications, highlighting the significance of rumor content changes during social dissemination.
Findings
Majority of rumors are modified by individuals during spreading
Original rumors tend to lose influence over time
Modified rumors dominate in networks with many modifiers
Abstract
Social network is a main tunnel of rumor spreading. Previous studies are concentrated on a static rumor spreading. The content of the rumor is invariable during the whole spreading process. Indeed, the rumor evolves constantly in its spreading process, which grows shorter, more concise, more easily grasped and told. In an early psychological experiment, researchers found about 70% of details in a rumor were lost in the first 6 mouth-to-mouth transmissions \cite{TPR}. Based on the facts, we investigate rumor spreading on social networks, where the content of the rumor is modified by the individuals with a certain probability. In the scenario, they have two choices, to forward or to modify. As a forwarder, an individual disseminates the rumor directly to its neighbors. As a modifier, conversely, an individual revises the rumor before spreading it out. When the rumor spreads on the social…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMisinformation and Its Impacts · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Complex Network Analysis Techniques
