Uncertain spreading model of internet rumors on social media platforms

The openness and convenience of social media lead to disturbance or 'noise' in the network environment during the spreading of Internet rumors, which adds uncertainties to the spreading. The Wiener process in probability theory has often been used in previous studies to describe disturbances in the spreading of rumors. However, it has been demonstrated that there are shortcomings in the random rumor spreading equation. To solve this problem, in this study, the uncertainty theory is introduced to this field. Specifically, we construct an uncertain rumor spreading model and then calculate the analytical solution of the uncertain rumor spreading equation and the inverse uncertainty distribution of the solution. Finally, a numerical simulation is carried out with rumor spreading data obtained from WeChat, Weibo, and other social media platforms to verify the validity of the proposed uncertain rumor spreading equation.