A cost-effective rumor-containing strategy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel, cost-effective approach to rumor suppression by optimizing truth-spreading strategies based on a new dynamical model, significantly reducing the effort needed to contain rumors.

Contribution

It introduces the first dynamical model for rumor-truth mixed spreading and formulates a cost-effective rumor containment strategy as an optimization problem.

Findings

Enhancing the first truth-spreading rate is key to cost-effective rumor suppression.

The optimal strategy reaches a first turning point in cost effectiveness.

Factors influencing the strategy's effectiveness are analyzed through simulations.

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of suppressing a rumor using the truth in a cost-effective way. First, an individual-level dynamical model capturing the rumor-truth mixed spreading processes is proposed. On this basis, the cost-effective rumor-containing problem is modeled as an optimization problem. Extensive experiments show that finding a cost-effective rumor-containing strategy boils down to enhancing the first truth-spreading rate until the cost effectiveness of the rumor-containing strategy reaches the first turning point. This finding greatly reduces the time spent for solving the optimization problem. The influences of different factors on the optimal cost effectiveness of a rumor-containing strategy are examined through computer simulations. We believe our findings help suppress rumors in a cost-effective way. To our knowledge, this is the first time the rumor-containing problem is treated this way.