Modeling and Simulation Analysis of the Competitive Propagation Mechanism Between Rumor and Anti-rumor in Public Emergencies

Social media has now become the main channel of online rumors. With hundreds of millions of subscribers, the features of immediacy and openness can compare with the traditional social network, spreading a rumor more quickly and disseminating it more widely, sometimes exceedingly influencing both personal life and social stability. This paper investigates competitive dynamics between rumor and anti-rumor on the attention and trust of individuals, considering herd mentality, timely, and precise debunking. For modeling the existence of a rumor and an anti-rumor at the same time, a two-stage competitive propagation model is developed. Numerical simulations using Python provide the following results, which denote that enhancing the timeliness and precision of anti-rumor will effectively reduce the rumor-spreading scale. At the same time, the timeliness of debunking is more effective during this process, which means a timely response to social concerns and continuous optimization of information accuracy, according to the developing situation, is important in effective debunking.