Bai Shizhen, Wu Wenya, Jiang Man
School of Management, Harbin University of Commerce, Harbin, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 2;13:937296. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.937296. eCollection 2022.
Online interactions have become major channels for people to obtain and disseminate information during the new normal of COVID-19, which can also be a primary platform for rumor propagation. There are many complex psychological reasons for spreading rumors, but previous studies have not fully analyzed this problem from the perspective of the interaction between official institutions and influential users. The purpose of this study is to determine optimal strategies for official institutions considering the impact of two different influential user types (trolls and reputed personalities) by designing two game-theoretic models, namely "Rumor Clarification and Interaction Model" and "Rumor Verification and Interaction Model," which can, respectively decide whether to clarify and when to clarify. The results of this article show that clarification strategies can be decided according to the characteristics of rumors and the influential user's reactions. Meanwhile, publishing verified information prevents trolls' "loophole advantages" and prevents reputed personalities from spreading false information due to the vague authenticity of rumors. Results also show that the verification strategy is limited by cost, period, and verification index.
在新冠疫情常态化期间，线上互动已成为人们获取和传播信息的主要渠道，而这也可能成为谣言传播的主要平台。谣言传播存在诸多复杂的心理原因，但以往的研究尚未从官方机构与有影响力的用户之间的互动角度对这一问题进行充分分析。本研究的目的是通过设计两个博弈论模型，即“谣言澄清与互动模型”和“谣言核实与互动模型”，来确定官方机构在考虑两种不同类型有影响力用户（恶意用户和知名人士）影响时的最优策略，这两个模型可以分别决定是否澄清以及何时澄清。本文的结果表明，可以根据谣言的特征和有影响力用户的反应来决定澄清策略。同时，发布经过核实的信息可防止恶意用户的“漏洞优势”，并防止知名人士因谣言真实性模糊而传播虚假信息。结果还表明，核实策略受到成本、时间和核实指标的限制。
