Susceptible-Infectious-Critical-Recovered rumor spreading model in social networks

As an important area of social networks, rumor spread has attracted the attention of many scholars. It aims to explore the rumor propagation, and to propose effective measures to curb the further spread of rumors. Different from some existing works, this paper believes that susceptible persons affected by rumor-refuting information will first enter the critical state, while ones who related to rumors will directly turn into the spread state. Therefore, this paper proposes a Susceptible-Infectious-Critical-Recovered (SICR) rumor model. In addition, considering that infectious persons with high levels of refuting rumors may cause emotional resonance among individuals, this model adds a connecting edge from the recovered to the infectious who are triggered by the information of refuting the rumors. First, the basic regeneration number R(0) is obtained by using the next generation matrix method. Then, the global stability of the rumor-free equilibrium E(0) and the persistence of rumor propagation are proved in detail in theoretical analysis. The simulation results show that the existence of a critical state can reduce the influence of rumors. Rumor refutation mechanism, as soon as possible to curb the spread of rumors, is an effective measure.