Impacts of suppressing guide on information spreading

TL;DR

This paper uses an agent-based model to analyze how suppressing guides influence information spread, revealing that their impact can sometimes increase dissemination due to audience reactions, which informs public opinion strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel agent-based model to study the complex effects of suppressing guides on information spreading in social networks.

Findings

Spreading threshold depends on information attractiveness and network topology.

Suppressing guides can sometimes enhance information spread due to audience reversal.

Results offer theoretical insights for public opinion management.

Abstract

It is quite common that guides are introduced to suppress the information spreading in modern society for different purposes. In this paper, an agent-based model is established to quantitatively analyze the impacts of suppressing guides on information spreading. We find that the spreading threshold depends on the attractiveness of the information and the topology of the social network with no suppressing guides at all. Usually, one would expect that the existence of suppressing guides in the spreading procedure may result in less diffusion of information within the overall network. However, we find that sometimes the opposite is true: the manipulating nodes of suppressing guides may lead to more extensive information spreading when there are audiences with the reversal mind. These results can provide valuable theoretical references to public opinion guidance on various information, e.g., rumor or news spreading.