An Efficient Competitive Control Mechanism for Negative Information Spread in Online Social Networks

In online social networks (OSNs), the spread of negative information can cause social shocks, endanger public safety and harm public interests. In this paper, to reduce the impact of negative information on the network ecosystem as much as possible, we consider a competitive strategy of mainstream media coverage and construct a competitively regulated reaction–diffusion model of negative information transmission. For this model, we obtain the basic reproduction number of information propagation, the invade numbers of negative information and positive information. Besides, the local and global stabilities of equilibrium states are discussed. Further, steady bifurcation analyses from a positive information equilibrium and a negative information equilibrium are carried out. Finally, we present some numerical simulations to verify the theoretical analysis results and discuss how spatial heterogeneity affects the process of information diffusion. The conclusions are as follows: Increasing the spread of positive information, controlling the spatial heterogeneity of the transmission rate and reducing the diffusion coefficient when spatial heterogeneous transmission rate occurs are beneficial for suppressing the spread of negative information.