Modelling the random spreading of fake news through a two-dimensional time-inhomogeneous birth-death process

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Di Crescenzo, Antonio, Paraggio, Paola
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909197422034944
author Di Crescenzo, Antonio
Paraggio, Paola
author_facet Di Crescenzo, Antonio
Paraggio, Paola
contents We consider a two-dimensional time-inhomogeneous birth-death process to model the time-evolution of fake news in a population. The two components of the process represent, respectively, (i) the number of individuals (say spreaders) who know the rumor and intend to spread it, and (ii) the number of individuals (say inactives) who have forgotten the rumor previously received. We employ the probability generating function-based approach to obtain the moments and the covariance of the two-dimensional process. We also analyze a new adimensional index to study the correlation between the two components. Some special cases are considered in which both the expected numbers of spreaders and inactives are equal to suitable sigmoidal curves, which are often adopted in modelling growth phenomena. Finally, we provide an application based on real data related to the diffusion of fake news, in which the optimal choice of the sigmoidal curve that fit the datasets is based on the minimization of the mean square error and of the relative absolute error.\
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_06123
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Modelling the random spreading of fake news through a two-dimensional time-inhomogeneous birth-death process
Di Crescenzo, Antonio
Paraggio, Paola
Probability
60J80, 60J85, 91B62, 91B70
We consider a two-dimensional time-inhomogeneous birth-death process to model the time-evolution of fake news in a population. The two components of the process represent, respectively, (i) the number of individuals (say spreaders) who know the rumor and intend to spread it, and (ii) the number of individuals (say inactives) who have forgotten the rumor previously received. We employ the probability generating function-based approach to obtain the moments and the covariance of the two-dimensional process. We also analyze a new adimensional index to study the correlation between the two components. Some special cases are considered in which both the expected numbers of spreaders and inactives are equal to suitable sigmoidal curves, which are often adopted in modelling growth phenomena. Finally, we provide an application based on real data related to the diffusion of fake news, in which the optimal choice of the sigmoidal curve that fit the datasets is based on the minimization of the mean square error and of the relative absolute error.\
title Modelling the random spreading of fake news through a two-dimensional time-inhomogeneous birth-death process
topic Probability
60J80, 60J85, 91B62, 91B70
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06123