ABSTRACT
With the increasing popularity of the Internet and the spread of COVID-19, epidemic-related rumors have attracted significant attention, allowing them to brew quickly and pose extremely negative social impacts. It is of great significance to investigate the propagation process of online rumors and offer tentative strategies to curb it. Based on the traditional susceptible, infected, recovered (SIR) model of online rumor propagation, groups of potential and die-hard rumor believers were introduced in this paper, establishing an authoritative rumor-refuting mechanism. Meanwhile, this paper considered factors such as the time-lag effect of rumor refutation from the nonauthoritative and authoritative institutions and the impact of the popularizing rate of higher education on the propagation and refutation of rumors. As a result of the process, the SEIRD (susceptible, exposed, infected, recovered, die-hard-infected) rumor propagation model was established to study how the proportion of the susceptible, exposed, infected, recovered, and die-hard-infected varies under different popularizing rates of higher education, the presence or absence of the authoritative rumor-refuting institutions, and the time-lag effect of rumor refutation. Finally, the model's effectiveness was verified via experimental simulation, which provided a reference for controlling the spread of online rumor propagation. In addition, the paper proposed a rumor-refuting coefficient to measure the rumor-refuting ability of the nonauthoritative and authoritative institutions. The results show that (1) increasing popularizing rate of higher education significantly slows down the rumor propagation and reduces the rumor propagation peak;(2) refuting the rumors based on the authoritative institutions is decisive for the ultimate elimination of rumors;and (3) eliminating the time-lag effect in refuting rumors facilitates slowing down the propagation of the online rumors. Therefore, the paper puts forward a feasible strategy to eliminate the time-lag effect of online rumor refutation in the future. Copyright ©2022 Chinese Journal of Engineering. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the effects of personality traits on online rumor sharing during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the mediating role of the fear of COVID-19 between them. We conducted this research using a web-based questionnaire distributed to 452 university students who were invited to fill it out. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used to test the data and model, with the yielded results demonstrating that three-extroversion, emotional instability, and conscientiousness-of the Big Five personality traits are positively related to a fear of COVID-19, with this fear positively affecting online rumor sharing. Moreover, fear of COVID-19 was found to act as a mediator between personality traits and online rumor sharing; thus, we can conclude that persons with high levels of extroversion, emotional instability, and conscientiousness are more likely to share rumors online due to a fear of COVID-19. This study furthers our understanding of the psychological mechanism by which personality traits influence online rumor sharing and provides references for anti-rumor campaigns taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it identifies key groups and sheds light on the necessity of reducing people's fear of COVID-19.