Integration of Deep Reinforcement Learning and Agent-based Simulation to Explore Strategies Counteracting Information Disorder

Computer Science > Social and Information Networks [Submitted on 13 Mar 2026] Integration of Deep Reinforcement Learning and Agent-based Simulation to Explore Strategies Counteracting Information Disorder Luigi Lomasto, Andrea Camoia, Alfonso Guarino, Nicola Lettieri, Delfina Malandrino, Rocco Zaccagnino In recent years, the spread of fake news has triggered a growing interest in Information Disorders (ID) on social media, a phenomenon that has become a focal point of research across fields ranging from complexity theory and computer science to cognitive sciences. Overall, such a body of research can be traced back to two main approaches. On the one hand, there are works focused on exploiting data mining to analyze the content of news and related metadata data-driven approach; on the other hand, works are aiming at making sense of the phenomenon at hand and their evolution using explicit simulation models model-driven approach). In this paper, we integrate these approaches to explore strategies for counteracting IDs. Heading in this direction, we put together: i. an Agent-Based model to simulate in a scientifically sound way both complex fake news dynamics and the effects produced by containment strategies therein; ii. Deep Reinforcement Learning to learn the strategies that can better mitigate the spread of misinformation. The outcomes of our work unfold on different levels. From a substantive point of view, the results of preliminary experiments started providing interesting cues about the conditions under which given policies can mitigate the spread of misinformation. From a technical and methodological point of view, we scratched the surface of promising and worthy research topics like the integration of social simulation and artificial intelligence and the enhancement of social science simulation environments. Subjects: Social and Information Networks (cs.SI); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computers and Society (cs.CY) MSC classes: 68T05, 91D30, 68Q32 ACM classes: I.2.6; I.6.5; J.4 Cite as: arXiv:2604.13047 [cs.SI]   (or arXiv:2604.13047v1 [cs.SI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.13047 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Luigi Lomasto PhD [view email] [v1] Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:03:11 UTC (175 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.SI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs cs.AI cs.CY References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)