Simulation of misinformation spreading processes in social networks: an application with NetLogo

摘要

We introduce an agent-based framework (developed in NetLogo, one of most relevant simulation platforms) to simulate the diffusion of a piece of misinformation, according to a known compartmental model in which the fake news and its debunking compete in a social network. The tool allows to set different values for the spreading rate of the news, the hoax credibility, the probability of fact-checking and the forgetting rate of the agents. Moreover, it is possible to run the process over any given network. Since NetLogo is free and open source, our tool could be easily used and/or personalised by other researchers to explore different scenarios of fake news spreading.