Vector-borne disinformation during disasters and emergencies

Abstract

During disasters and emergencies (earthquakes, pandemics, economic crises etc.), we also face a second challenge, pollution of information. The transmitted information may be false, potentially harmful and speculative. Today, the main source of information seems to be the social media, which behaves as a vector via sharing news. In this manuscript, the concept of the transmission dynamics of vector-borne diseases is adapted to the transmission dynamics of vector-borne disinformation. The dynamical behavior of the model is analyzed, the disinformation-free and disinformation endemic equilibria of the model are found and both their local and global stabilities are presented. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to support the analytical results of the dynamical transmission of disinformation.(C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.