• Free to Read

Influence of trust in the spreading of information

Hongrun Wu, Alex Arenas, and Sergio Gómez
Phys. Rev. E 95, 012301 – Published 3 January 2017

Abstract

The understanding and prediction of information diffusion processes on networks is a major challenge in network theory with many implications in social sciences. Many theoretical advances occurred due to stochastic spreading models. Nevertheless, these stochastic models overlooked the influence of rational decisions on the outcome of the process. For instance, different levels of trust in acquaintances do play a role in information spreading, and actors may change their spreading decisions during the information diffusion process accordingly. Here, we study an information-spreading model in which the decision to transmit or not is based on trust. We explore the interplay between the propagation of information and the trust dynamics happening on a two-layer multiplex network. Actors' trustable or untrustable states are defined as accumulated cooperation or defection behaviors, respectively, in a Prisoner's Dilemma setup, and they are controlled by a memory span. The propagation of information is abstracted as a threshold model on the information-spreading layer, where the threshold depends on the trustability of agents. The analysis of the model is performed using a tree approximation and validated on homogeneous and heterogeneous networks. The results show that the memory of previous actions has a significant effect on the spreading of information. For example, the less memory that is considered, the higher is the diffusion. Information is highly promoted by the emergence of trustable acquaintances. These results provide insight into the effect of plausible biases on spreading dynamics in a multilevel networked system.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Received 13 September 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.95.012301

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
Networks

Authors & Affiliations

Hongrun Wu1,2, Alex Arenas2, and Sergio Gómez2

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Software Engineering, Wuhan University, 430072 Wuhan, China
  • 2Departament d'Enginyeria Informàtica i Matemàtiques, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 43007 Tarragona, Spain

Article Text

Click to Expand

References

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 1 — January 2017

Reuse & Permissions
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review E

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×