Immunization against the Spread of Rumors in Homogenous Networks

Laijun Zhao; Jiajia Wang; Rongbing Huang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124978

Immunization against the Spread of Rumors in Homogenous Networks

PLoS One. 2015 May 1;10(5):e0124978. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124978. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Laijun Zhao¹, Jiajia Wang¹, Rongbing Huang²

Affiliations

¹ Sino-US Global Logistics Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, P.R. China; Antai College of Economics & Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200052, P.R. China.
² School of Administrative Studies, York University, Toronto ON M3J 1P3, Canada.

Abstract

Since most rumors are harmful, how to control the spread of such rumors is important. In this paper, we studied the process of "immunization" against rumors by modeling the process of rumor spreading and changing the termination mechanism for the spread of rumors to make the model more realistic. We derived mean-field equations to describe the dynamics of the rumor spread. By carrying out steady-state analysis, we derived the spreading threshold value that must be exceeded for the rumor to spread. We further discuss a possible strategy for immunization against rumors and obtain an immunization threshold value that represents the minimum level required to stop the rumor from spreading. Numerical simulations revealed that the average degree of the network and parameters of transformation probability significantly influence the spread of rumors. More importantly, the simulations revealed that immunizing a higher proportion of individuals is not necessarily better because of the waste of resources and the generation of unnecessary information. So the optimal immunization rate should be the immunization threshold.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Communication*
Humans
Models, Theoretical
Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted
Social Support*

Associated data

figshare/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.1333435

Grants and funding

This study is supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project No. 71373155 and No. 90924030) (L. Zhao), Shanghai Pujiang Program(project No.14PJC073) (L. Zhao) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (project No. 2014M561481) (J. Wang). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.