Integrating Persuasion Theory into the Epidemiological Modelling of Health Misinformation Spread on Social Media
This study presents a hybrid epidemiological and behavioural framework to simulate the spread of health misinformation on social media. We extend the classical Susceptible--Infected--Recovered (SIR) model to a six-compartment structure (SIRMMM), incorporating Misinformed Susceptible (MS), Misinformed Infected (MI), and Misinformed Recovered (MR) compartments to better reflect the dynamics of the misinformation lifecycle. To account for individual-level behavioural variation, we extend the SIRMMM model by integrating psychological signals from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), including sentiment polarity, engagement metrics, and cognitive effort, which dynamically modulate the misin...
| Authors | Mkululi Sikosana, Sean Maudsley-Barton, Oluwaseun Ajao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.SI |
| Published | 16 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 16 August 2026 |
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