IRLTS rumor propagation model considering the influence of lurking psychology and the truth of rumors

Rumor propagation in social networks disrupts people's lives, thus affecting the stability and development of society. To explore the rumor propagation mechanism and control its spread, a novel IRLTS (Ignorant-Rumor-Spreader-Lurker-Truth-Spreader-Stifler) rumor propagation model is proposed, which considers the influence of lurking psychology and the truth of rumors. First, the basic reproduction number and the equilibria of the proposed model are computed. Second, the stability of the equilibria is demonstrated, and the trans-critical bifurcation at the equilibria is analyzed. Finally, we corroborate the theoretical results and the influence of key parameters through numerical simulations, perform sensitivity analysis of the basic reproduction number, and evaluate the proposed model through comparative experiments. Furthermore, the proposed model is applied to an actual rumor dataset to verify its validity. We employ the least squares method to estimate the proposed model's parameters, which are subsequently utilized to forecast rumor propagation trends. The R-squared value for the proposed model on the actual dataset is 0.9567. The outcomes indicate the model is valid and capable of predicting rumor spreading trends, thereby providing theoretical support for formulating strategies to control rumor propagation.