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.
Objective: To explore the law of opinion dissemination and individual opinion evolution at the micro level, this paper analyzes the influence of variation and oyster on communication from the perspective of network structure.Methods: In this paper, we introduce the concepts of “variation” and “oyster”, build a multi-layer coupled network environment combined with the ISOVR model, and conduct simulation experiments of network information dissemination based on the bounded trust model.Results: The experimental results reveal that the extent and scope of variation’s spread in the network are more dependent on the trust of nodes themselves, and decreasing the trust of nodes significantly reduces the rate and peak value of variation. Changing the silence coefficient of variation does not effectively change the direction of rumor propagation, which indicates that rumor has a strong propagation ability after mutation.Conclusion: The insights of this paper on the dissemination of public opinions include: 1) pay attention to people with high trust levels, such as opinion leaders; 2) clarify the misinformation in time to prevent further spread of rumors.
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