Fig. 2.

State transition diagram for the competitive diffusions of information. Here “U” denotes the state that people are unknown about rumor and knowledge. “A₁” denotes the state that people believe rumor, and “A₂” denotes the state that people believe knowledge. α₁ and α₂ denote the infectivities of rumor and knowledge. α₃ denotes the penetration intensity of knowledge into rumor. f₁ and f₂ denote the forgetting probabilities of rumor and knowledge.