Optimal control of a stochastic rumour propagation in online social networks

Abstract

The rapid development of social networks makes the rumour, other false news disseminate to the people in a short period. Online users in social networks are dynamically changing the connectivity over time. The effect of dynamic connections results in stochastic variation which is termed as noise. In this paper, a nonlinear rumour propagation model is formulated, the basic regeneration number [Formula: see text] of the proposed model is computed and the stability for the model is discussed. Further, we extend the model to stochastic rumour propagation for online social networks incorporating noise. The existence and uniqueness of the stochastic rumour propagation for the homogeneous network are investigated. Optimal control strategy of stochastic rumour spreading model in online social network is investigated to control the parameters. A comparison between deterministic and stochastic rumour spreading model in online social network is numerically illustrated.