Copyright © 2013 Xiaxia Zhao and Jianzhong Wang. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Rumor is a kind of social remark, that is untrue, and not be confirmed, and spreads on a large scale in a short time. Usually, it can induce a cloud of pressure, anxiety, and panic. Traditionally, it is propagated by word of mouth. Nowadays, with the emergence of the internet, rumors can be spread by instant messengers, emails, or publishing. With this new pattern of spreading, an ISRW dynamical model considering the medium as a subclass is established. Beside the dynamical analysis of the model, we mainly explore the mechanism of spreading of individuals-to-individuals and medium-to-individual. By numerical simulation, we find that if we want to control the rumor spreading, it will not only need to control the rate of change of the spreader subclass, but also need to control the change of the information about rumor in medium which has larger influence. Moreover, to control the effusion of rumor is more important than deleting existing information about rumor. On the one hand, government should enhance the management of internet. On the other hand, relevant legal institutions for punishing the rumor creator and spreader on internet who can be tracked should be established. Using this way, involved authorities can propose efficient measures to control the rumor spreading to keep the stabilization of society and development of economy.