Detection of Rumors and Their Sources in Social Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

Abstract

With the recent advancements in social network platform technology, an overwhelming amount of information is spreading rapidly. In this situation, it can become increasingly difficult to discern what information is false or true. If false information proliferates significantly, it can lead to undesirable outcomes. Hence, when we receive some information, we can pose the following two questions: $(i)$ Is the information true? $(ii)$ If not, who initially spread that information? The first problem is the rumor detection issue, while the second is the rumor source detection problem. A rumor-detection problem involves identifying and mitigating false or misleading information spread via various communication channels, particularly online platforms and social media. Rumors can range from harmless ones to deliberately misleading content aimed at deceiving or manipulating audiences. Detecting misinformation is crucial for maintaining the integrity of information ecosystems and preventing harmful effects such as the spread of false beliefs, polarization, and even societal harm. Therefore, it is very important to quickly distinguish such misinformation while simultaneously finding its source to block it from spreading on the network. However, most of the existing surveys have analyzed these two issues separately. In this work, we first survey the existing research on the rumor-detection and rumor source detection problems with joint detection approaches, simultaneously. This survey deals with these two issues together so that their relationship can be observed and it provides how the two problems are similar and different. The limitations arising from the rumor detection, rumor source detection, and their combination problems are also explained, and some challenges to be addressed in future works are presented.