On a model for the fake-news diffusion between two interacting populations

Abstract

The dynamics of information propagating among populations that interact might have an enormous impact on public opinion, particularly when such information is false, known as fake news. In this contribution, we propose and analyze the fake news dissemination that occurs when two distinct sub-populations (not necessarily homogeneous) share information, using a reinterpretation of a compartmental model for disease dissemination. We show the model's well-posedness and present numerically simulated scenarios for the dynamics of fake news spreading among populations, with the model parameters associated with some human development indices. The obtained results show that the velocity of the fake news diffusion among the populations is largely impacted by the gap between the human development indices of each population. They also show that a small percentage of control over the information shared by the population leads to a large decrease in the amount and velocity of fake news diffusion.