Rumor Diffusion and Convergence during the 3.11 Earthquake: A Twitter Case Study

DOI IR IR (HANDLE) Web Site PubMed 9 Citations 27 References Open Access

Description

We focus on Internet rumors and present an empirical analysis and simulation results of their diffusion and convergence during emergencies. In particular, we study one rumor that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, which later turned out to be misinformation. By investigating whole Japanese tweets that were sent one week after the quake, we show that one correction tweet, which originated from a city hall account, diffused enormously. We also demonstrate a stochastic agent-based model, which is inspired by contagion model of epidemics SIR, can reproduce observed rumor dynamics. Our model can estimate the rumor infection rate as well as the number of people who still believe in the rumor that cannot be observed directly. For applications, rumor diffusion sizes can be estimated in various scenarios by combining our model with the real data.

Journal

  • PLOS ONE

    PLOS ONE 10 (4), e0121443-, 2015-04

    Public Library of Science

Citations (9)*help

See more

References(27)*help

See more

Related Projects

See more

Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top