Researchers from the University of Zaragoza have analyzed the propagation models of therumors on social media. The study, published by the prestigious journalPhysical Review E, will serve to develop new techniques in viral marketing (electronic word of mouth), more efficient and less expensive.
Inspired by epidemic contagion models, in therumor spread modelan agent begins to spread a certain rumor in a network of social relationships. As a result, neighboring agents can “catch” the news through the links that link them to “infected” nodes so that, while the contagion lasts, these agents in turn becomerumor spreaders. Finally, the agents are “cured” the moment they stop spreading said message (because their neighbors already know the news and it makes no sense to try to spread it).
Despite the usefulness of the disease-rumor metaphor, the epidemic and rumor-spreading models are only superficially similar, since what determines when a rumor fades is not so much that the agent becomes “immune” in a way. autonomous? as occurs with diseases-, but depends on its interaction with agents that already know the rumor. On the other hand, it is known thatin epidemic processes there are “influential propagators”. This means that, if the disease reaches them, in all probability the impact of the epidemic will be global: it will affect practically any agent in the network of relationships. Conversely,in information dissemination dynamics there are no such “special” propagators. The new study suggests that it is irrelevant who initiates a rumor-spreading process, since it will be just as likely to be successful if it is initiated by any other individual.
The research results could be applied in fields such as viral marketing or information campaigns, in addition to offering an ideal theoretical framework to study, for example, collective decision-making or information dissemination mechanisms.
