Paradoxical epidemic dynamics induced by dual-awareness competition under asymmetric media intervention

Mass-media intervention plays a central role in shaping public awareness and mitigating epidemic outbreaks, yet its interplay with heterogeneous protective behaviors and limited physical resources remains poorly understood. Here, we propose a media-driven coevolutionary framework on multiplex networks to study how asymmetric information dissemination affects epidemic dynamics. Combining Markov chain analysis with numerical simulations, we separate public awareness into behavioral and resource-based channels and show that their competition governs the macroscopic epidemic outcome. We find that increasing the media intervention intensity does not always suppress the epidemic: over-promoting the resource-based channel can cause resource congestion, whereas over-promoting the behavioral channel can induce a protective deficit, leading to a nonmonotonic dependence of the infection density on media intervention intensity. The optimal media dissemination tendency depends on the available resources and the effectiveness of protective behaviors. Behavior-oriented guidance is favored when medical resources are limited or behavioral protection is strong; a balanced strategy is preferred when the two protection channels are comparable; and resource-oriented guidance becomes more suitable when resources are sufficient or behavioral protection is weak. Once the dissemination tendency is properly matched to these conditions, increasing the intervention intensity further suppresses the epidemic. These findings provide practical guidance for designing mass-media strategies for epidemic control.