Researchers Used Example of Nuclear Fission to Explain How a Rumor Spreads in a Society

Researchers from Shandong Normal University in China, led by Wenrong Zheng published a paper which talks about how a rumor doesn't go viral, instead gets nuclear. The researchers gave an example of how an infection spreads to make people understand the spread of information or misinformation. Just like people act as vectors for the spread of viruses, they are also a vector in spreading lies across masses.

It is a fact that lies travel faster than truth because people are more interested in listening to rumors than boring truths. The researchers say that the infectious disease model isn't that helpful in understanding the spread of lies. This is because diseases do not propagate actively but rumors do. The infectious disease model also just talks about the result of disease, that is, death but not other factors.

So what other natural processes can researchers use to study the spread of rumors? Many researchers have used a number of processes but the researchers of this study used nuclear fission to explain the phenomenon. Nuclear fission is the splitting of a nucleus into two or more nuclei by collision of uranium atom and neutron which produces large amounts of heat and radiation. The researchers named the rumors as neutrons, uranium atoms are named as receivers of rumors and barriers to fission are named as active propagation thresholds. The energy the fission produces is compared to the society’s reaction to online rumors.

When a neutron (rumor) collides with uranium atoms (people), the uranium produces energy according to the impact of collision. So, if a rumor is of high energy, people are going to get activated quickly and the spread will be larger too. Is the heat being produced by the activation of rumor getting utilized, that is, through user activity? Even though people are categorized as atoms, they still possess human qualities like how much someone is resistant to rumors, how educated a person hearing rumors is, how quickly someone can identify misinformation?

The overall heat produced by rumors is used to study how society is treating a rumor. The propagation can also be studied by using this nuclear model. It is an interesting way to look at how rumors can spread and how society is going to react to it. It can also help us understand which types of rumors society reacts quickly too and which types of rumors do not leave much impact after fission.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World