Modern Business Research Center, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China.
School of Management Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China.
Front Public Health. 2022 Jan 27;9:788475. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.788475. eCollection 2021.
In the era of mobile internet, information dissemination has made a new leap in speed and in breadth. With the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the COVID-19 rumor diffusion that is not limited by time and by space often becomes extremely complex and fickle. It is also normal that a piece of unsubstantiated news about COVID-19 could develop to many versions. We focus on the stagnant role and information variants in the process of rumor diffusion about COVID-19, and through the study of variability and silence in the dissemination, which combines the effects of stagnation phenomenon and information variation on the whole communication system in the circulation of rumors about COVID-19, based on the classic rumor SIR (Susceptible Infected Recovered) model, we introduce a new concept of "variation" and "oyster". The stability of the new model is analyzed by the mean field equation, and the threshold of COVID-19 rumor propagation is obtained later. According to the results of the simulation experiment, whether in the small world network or in the scale-free network, the increase of the immure and the silent probability of the variation can effectively reduce the speed of rumor diffusion about COVID-19 and is conducive to the dissemination of the truth in the whole population. Studies have also shown that increasing the silence rate of variation can reduce COVID-19 rumor transmission more quickly than the immunization rate. The interesting discovery is that at the same time, a higher rumor infection rate can bring more rumors about COVID-19 but does not always maintain a high number of the variation which could reduce variant tendency of rumors. The more information diffuses in the social group, the more consistent the version and content of the information will be, which proves that the more adequate each individual information is, the slower and less likely rumors about COVID-19 spread. This consequence tells us that the government needs to guide the public to the truth. Announcing the true information publicly could instantly contain the COVID-19 rumor diffusion well rather than making them hidden or voiceless.
在移动互联网时代，信息传播在速度和广度上都实现了新的飞跃。随着 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的爆发，不受时间和空间限制的 COVID-19 谣言传播往往变得极其复杂和多变。关于 COVID-19 的未经证实的新闻可能会发展成多个版本也是正常的。我们关注 COVID-19 谣言传播过程中的停滞角色和信息变体，并通过研究传播过程中停滞现象和信息变化的可变性和沉默性，结合 COVID-19 谣言传播中整个通信系统的停滞现象和信息变化的影响，基于经典谣言 SIR（易感-感染-恢复）模型，我们引入了一个新的概念“变体”和“牡蛎”。通过平均场方程分析新模型的稳定性，得到 COVID-19 谣言传播的阈值。根据模拟实验的结果，无论是在小世界网络还是无标度网络中，增加变体的免疫和沉默概率都可以有效降低 COVID-19 谣言传播的速度，有利于真相在整个人群中的传播。研究还表明，增加变体的沉默率比免疫率更能更快地降低 COVID-19 谣言的传播。有趣的发现是，同时，较高的谣言感染率可以带来更多关于 COVID-19 的谣言，但并不总是保持较高的变体数量，这可以降低谣言的变体趋势。信息在社会群体中传播得越多，信息的版本和内容就越一致，这证明每个个体信息越充分，COVID-19 谣言传播的速度就越慢，传播的可能性就越低。这一结果告诉我们，政府需要引导公众了解真相。公开公布真实信息可以立即有效地遏制 COVID-19 谣言的传播，而不是将其隐藏或静音。
