{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,25]],"date-time":"2026-03-25T12:29:44Z","timestamp":1774441784508,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":57,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,24]],"date-time":"2026-03-24T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1774310400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In many cases, the pieces of information at our disposal (messages) come from a recommender source, which can be either an official news system, a large language model or simply a social network. Often, also, these messages are build so as to promote their active spreading, which, on the other hand, has a positive effect on one\u2019s own popularity. However, the content of the message can be false, giving origin to a phenomenon analogous to the spreading of a disease. In principle, there is always the possibility of checking the correctness of the message by \u201cinvesting\u201d some time, so we can say that this checking has a cost. We develop a simple model based on the mechanism of \u201crisk perception\u201d (propensity to check the falseness of a message) and mutual trustability (affinity), based on the average number of fake messages received and checked. On the other side, the probability of emitting a fake message is inversely proportional to one\u2019s risk perception and the affinity among agents is also exploited by the recommender system. We aim at investigating this process with the goal of deriving methods for identifying the penetration level of fake news from behavioral patterns of users. This model represents an integration of cognitive psychology with computational agent-based modeling.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info17040314","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,25]],"date-time":"2026-03-25T09:11:14Z","timestamp":1774429874000},"page":"314","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Modeling the Spreading of Fake News Through the Interactions Between Human Heuristics and Recommender Systems"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6293-0305","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Franco","family":"Bagnoli","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department Physics and Astronomy, University of Florence, Via G. Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy"},{"name":"Center for the Study of Complex Systems, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy"},{"name":"INFN, Section of Florence, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy"},{"name":"ESPACE_DEV, UMR 228 University of Perpignan via Domitia UPVD, 52 Avenue Paul Alduy, 6600 Perpignan, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6971-4023","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tijan Juraj","family":"Cvetkovi\u0107","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Complex Systems, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy"},{"name":"Department of Education, Literatures, Intercultural Studies, Languages and Psychology, University of Florence, 50135 Florence, Italy"},{"name":"Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation, Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via Romagnosi, 18\/A, 00196 Rome, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0203-4461","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andrea","family":"Guazzini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Complex Systems, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy"},{"name":"Department of Education, Literatures, Intercultural Studies, Languages and Psychology, University of Florence, 50135 Florence, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0540-5053","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pietro","family":"Li\u00f3","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, William Gates Building, 15 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FD, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0004-1369-4635","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Riccardo","family":"Romei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Complex Systems, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy"},{"name":"Department of Education, Literatures, Intercultural Studies, Languages and Psychology, University of Florence, 50135 Florence, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,24]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1146","DOI":"10.1126\/science.aap9559","article-title":"The spread of true and false news online","volume":"359","author":"Vosoughi","year":"2018","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1145\/3395046","article-title":"A survey of fake news","volume":"53","author":"Zhou","year":"2021","journal-title":"ACM Comput. 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