  Rumors have ignited revolutions, undermined the trust in political parties,
or threatened the stability of human societies. Such destructive potential has
been significantly enhanced by the development of on-line social networks.
Several theoretical and computational studies have been devoted to
understanding the dynamics and to control rumor spreading. In the present work,
a model of rumor-telling in opinion polarized networks was investigated through
extensive computer simulations. The key mechanism is the coupling between ones'
opinions and their leaning to spread a given information, either by supporting
or opposing its content. We report that a highly modular topology of polarized
networks strongly impairs rumor spreading, but the couplings between agent's
opinions and their spreading/stifling rates can either further inhibit or,
conversely, foster information propagation, depending on the nature of those
couplings. In particular, a controversy-seeking mechanism, in which agents are
stimulated to postpone their transitions to the stiffer state upon interactions
with other agents of confronting opinions, enhances the rumor spreading.
Therefore such a mechanism is capable of overcoming the propagation bottlenecks
imposed by loosely connected modular structures.
