A Multi-agent Based Sage-Fool Model for Rumor Propagation

Although current diffusion models have paid some attention to the diversity of diffusion actors, they usually focus on the diversity of the attributes of diffusion actors but ignore the diversity of the behavior patterns of different types of diffusion actors. As a result, it becomes difficult to control the rumor's diffusion speed and diffusion range. Then we take both the diversity of behavior patterns and attributes of diffusion actors into consideration. Based on the consideration, we propose an agent model that can fully embody the range of the two kinds of diversity of actors. In our model, one type of agent prefers to spread any rumor that they are interested in without regarding to its reliability, another type of agent prefers to only spread a reliable rumor. We call the first type of agent a “fool” and the second type a “sage” and call our model the sage-fool model (S-F model). What's more, we will propose some important attribute of each agent. Finally, we conduct two experiments, one normal experiment to compare our model with the classic laws of information diffusion and another explorative experiment to find some specific laws in our model.