Modeling the effect of literacy and social media advertisements on the dynamics of infectious diseases

Abstract

Education empowers humans and gets them ready to face challenges of life efficiently. Literacy and social media campaigns make people aware of the tools and techniques requisite for protection against the emerging diseases. In this paper, we investigate the combined impacts of literacy and social media on the dynamics of infectious diseases spreading through direct contact. Normalized forward sensitivity indices explore the impacts of parameters on basic reproduction number. We perform global sensitivity analysis for the infective population with respect to some controllable epidemiologically important parameters. If the growth rate of broadcasting informations through social media is very high, the system shows limit cycle oscillations. On the other hand, the baseline number of social media advertisements stabilize the system by evacuating persistent oscillations and ultimately settling the system from stable endemic equilibrium to stable disease-free state. The dissemination of awareness among literate people also suppresses the prevalence of limit cycle oscillations and drives the system to disease-free zone. An extension in model is made by assuming the growth rate of social media advertisements as periodic function of time. The simulation results show that the nonautonomous system showcases periodic as well as higher periodic solutions on the increase in the growth rate of advertisements. Our results evoke that media and education play a tremendous role in mounting awareness among the population leading to elimination of disease in the society.