The Spread of Rumors in Society: A Mathematical Modeling Approach in Election Case Studies

Rumors can be defined as unverified information or statements shared by people that may be positive or negative and circulate without confirmation. Since humans naturally seek factual information for social and self-enhancement purposes, rumors become an inevitable aspect of human life, including in politics, such as elections. The complexity of the electoral process, with various factors such as individual candidates, social circumstances, and particularly the media, leads to the dynamic spread of rumors in society. Thus, it is both interesting and important to understand the dynamics of rumor spreading, particularly in the context of elections. In this article, we formulate a mathematical model of rumor spread dynamics based on different attitudes of people toward rumors. The model considers the spread of rumors about two candidates in the electoral context. From the model, we derived and investigated the basic reproductive number (R0) as a threshold for rumor spread and conducted a sensitivity analysis with respect to all the model parameters. Based on numerical experiments and simulations, it was revealed that the number of people resistant to or disbelieving in rumors increases significantly in the first ten days and remains higher than other subpopulations for at least after first seven days. Furthermore, we found that a high number of people directly affected by rumors, combined with the rumor transmission rate for both candidates being greater than each other, are necessary and sufficient conditions for rumors to circulate rapidly and remain stable in society. The results of this study can be interpreted and considered as a campaign strategy in an electoral context.