The dynamics of rumor spreading is investigated using a model with three kinds of
agents who are, respectively, the Seeds, the Agnostics, and the Others. While Seeds
are the ones who start spreading the rumor being adamantly convinced of its truth,
Agnostics reject any kind of rumor and do not believe in conspiracy theories. In between,
the Others constitute the main part of the community. While Seeds are always Believers
and Agnostics are always Indifferents, Others can switch between being Believer and
Indifferent depending on who they are discussing with. The underlying driving dynamics
is implemented via local updates of randomly formed groups of agents. In each group,
an Other turns into a Believer as soon asmor more Believers are present in the group.
However, since some Believers may lose interest in the rumor as time passes by, we
add a flipping fixed rate 0= 2triggers a drastic qualitative change in the spreading
process. Whenm=1, even a small group of Believers may manage to convince a large part
of the community very quickly. In contrast, for m >= 2, even a substantial fraction
of Believers does not prevent the rumor dying out after a few update rounds. Our results
provide an explanation on why a given rumor spreads within a social group and not
in another and also why some rumors will not spread in neither groups. Published under
license by AIP Publishing.
