Official long-term and short-term strategies for preventing the spread of rumors

Recently, public security incidents caused by rumor spreading have frequently occurred, leading to public panic, social chaos and even casualties. Therefore, how governments establish strategies to restrain rumor spreading is important for judging their governance capacity. Herein, we consider one long-term strategy (education) and two short-term strategies (isolation and debunking) for officials to intervene in rumor spreading. To investigate the effects of these strategies, an improved rumor-spreading model and a series of mean-field equations are proposed. Through theoretical analysis, the effective thresholds of three rumor-prevention strategies are obtained, respectively. Finally, through simulation analysis, the effectiveness of these strategies in preventing rumor spreading is investigated. The results indicate that long-term and short-term strategies are effective in suppressing rumor spreading. The greater the efforts of governments to suppress rumors, the smaller the final rumor size. The study also shows that the three strategies are the best when applied simultaneously. The government can adopt corresponding measures to suppress rumor spreading effectively.