Rumor spreading and inoculation of nodes in complex networks

Over the Internet or on social networks rumors can spread and can affect the society in disaster. The question one asks about this phenomenon is that whether these rumors can be suppressed using suitable mechanisms. One of the possible solutions is to inoculate a certain fraction of nodes against rumors. The inoculation can be done randomly or in targeted fashion. In this paper, small world network model has been used to investigate the efficiency of inoculation. It has been found that if average degree of small world network is small than both inoculation methods are successful. When average degree is large, neither of these methods are able to stop rumor spreading. But if acceptability of rumor is reduced along with inoculation, the rumor spreading can be stopped even in this case.The proposed hypothesis has been verified using simulation experiments.

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