Increasing empirical evidence in recent years has shown that bots or malicious users in a social network play a critical role in the propagation of false information, while a theoretical modeling of such a problem has been largely ignored. In this paper, applying a simple contagion model, we study the effect of malicious nodes on the spreading of false information by incorporating the smart nodes who perform better than normal nodes in discerning false information. The malicious nodes, however, will always repost (or adopt) the false message as long as they receive it. We show analytically that, for a random distribution of malicious nodes, there is a critical number of malicious nodes above which the false information could outbreak in a random network. We further study three different distribution strategies of selecting malicious nodes for false information spreading. We find that malicious nodes that have large degrees, or are tightly connected, can enhance the spread. However, when they are close to the smart nodes, the spreading of false information can either be promoted or inhibited, depending on the network structure.
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August 2020
Research Article|
August 03 2020
The impact of malicious nodes on the spreading of false information
Special Collection:
Dynamics of Social Systems
Zhongyuan Ruan
;
Zhongyuan Ruan
1
Institute of Cyberspace Security, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
2
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
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Bin Yu;
Bin Yu
1
Institute of Cyberspace Security, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
2
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
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Xincheng Shu;
Xincheng Shu
1
Institute of Cyberspace Security, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
2
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
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Qingpeng Zhang
;
Qingpeng Zhang
3
School of Data Science, City University of Hong Kong
, Hong Kong 999077, China
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Qi Xuan
Qi Xuan
a)
1
Institute of Cyberspace Security, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
2
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology
, Hangzhou 310023, China
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: xuanqi@zjut.edu.cn
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a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: xuanqi@zjut.edu.cn
Note: This article is part of the Focus Issue, Dynamics of Social Systems.
Chaos 30, 083101 (2020)
Article history
Received:
February 18 2020
Accepted:
July 13 2020
Citation
Zhongyuan Ruan, Bin Yu, Xincheng Shu, Qingpeng Zhang, Qi Xuan; The impact of malicious nodes on the spreading of false information. Chaos 1 August 2020; 30 (8): 083101. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0005105
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