Study on rumor spreading simulation model in collective violent events

Abstract

Rumor spreading plays an important role in the development of collective violent events. Using Agent-based modeling and simulation, this paper presents a new rumor spreading simulation model to represent the specific process of rumor spreading by extracting characters of rumor and individual factors. Simulation results have shown that the more inflammatory the rumor is, the more quickly it spreads and the wider the influence scope is; the higher the proportion of individuals who know the truth in the crowd is, the more slowly rumor spreads and the smaller the influence scope is; however the raise of individual's grievance could accelerate the spreading of rumor easily. The conclusions could provide meaningful proposals for related departments to deal with similar problems. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.