Heterogeneous social difference in the interplay between epidemic and information spreading

¹ Adaptive Networks and Control Lab, Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Information Science and Technology, Fudan University - Shanghai, 200433, China
² The Institute of Complex Networks and Intelligent Systems, Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Tongji University - Shanghai, 201210, China

^(a) E-mail: cong_li@fudan.edu.cn (corresponding author)

Received: 11 June 2022
Accepted: 16 November 2022

Abstract

Previous studies on epidemic-information coupled network assumed that individuals receive information with the same probability. In this work, considering imperfect vaccination and the heterogeneity of human activities, we explore a coupled susceptible-infected-vaccinated-recovered/unaware-aware-unaware (SIRV-UAU) model by introducing individual social difference into the interaction between the spread of epidemic and the diffusion of epidemic-related information. The individual social difference which indicates the heterogeneity of information diffused and accepted by individuals leads to different protective levels. The primary spreading rate and the social reinforcement strength are two decisive factors to measure the individual social difference. We find that increasing the social reinforcement strength, the primary spreading rate, or the influence factor of uploading information can promote the diffusion of information and inhibit the spread of epidemic. Specifically, compared with the social reinforcement strength and the primary spreading rate, the influence factor of individuals uploading information has a significant impact on the spread of epidemic. Furthermore, we study the effect of the reduction factor that reduces the risk of infection and the social reinforcement strength on the spread of epidemic. The results show that, when the reduction factor is smaller, the proportion of recovered individuals at the steady state decreases significantly with the increase of the social reinforcement strength.