We applied two scenarios to compare how these regular agents behave in the Twitter network, with and without malicious agents, to study how much influence malicious agents have on the general susceptibility of the regular users. To achieve this, we implemented a belief value system to measure how impressionable an agent is when encountering misinformation and how its behavior gets affected. The results indicated similar outcomes in the two scenarios as the affected belief value changed for these regular agents, exhibiting belief in the misinformation. Although the change in belief value occurred slowly, it had a profound effect when the malicious agents were present, as many more regular agents started believing in misinformation.

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Chang, H.-C. H., Chen, E., Zhang, M., Muric, G., & Ferrara, E. (2021). Social Bots and Social Media Manipulation in 2020: The Year in Review. ArXiv:2102.08436 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2102.08436

Yang, K.-C., Pierri, F., Hui, P.-M., Axelrod, D., Torres-Lugo, C., Bryden, J., & Menczer, F. (2020). The COVID-19 Infodemic: Twitter versus Facebook. ArXiv:2012.09353 [Cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2012.09353

Identifying social media manipulation with OSoMe tools. (2020, August 11). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BMv0PrdVGs&feature=youtu.be

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