A new study shows that factual messages get more attention when they sound like the communities they are trying to reach. That may be useful—but it also raises a bigger question: should trustworthy information really have to imitate the tactics of misinformation to be heard?
Imagine you're a parent scrolling through Facebook late at night, worried about your baby's health.
One post says: “Protect the community and your kids by booking their vaccinations today.”
Another asks: “Do you know all the effects of childhood vaccinations on your babies?”
Both messages lead to the same reliable vaccination information. Yet, according to new research, the second message was about 52 per cent more likely to be clicked.
At first glance, that sounds like a breakthrough. If misleading content succeeds because it feels personal, familiar and conversational, perhaps factual information should learn to speak the same language.
But there is an uncomfortable question hiding underneath that conclusion:
What happens when the fight against misinformation becomes a fight over who can produce the most emotionally compelling message?
That distinction matters.
The problem may not be the message. It may be the environment.
The study, based on research involving Australian Facebook communities, explored whether reliable information could attract more attention by adopting communication styles commonly found in communities sharing anti-vaccination and far-right narratives.
The researchers developed three fictional audience profiles and tailored advertisements to the language and concerns associated with those audiences.
Jennifer, a young mother, received personal and caring language.
Patrick, a retired teacher, was addressed in a more authoritative and explanatory tone.
Aaron, a younger man interested in fitness and technology, received a motivational message encouraging him to take control and check the facts.
The results were striking in some cases.
Education-related advertisements using familiar language reportedly received clicks around 6 per cent of the time, compared with 1.1 per cent for neutral versions.
Vaccination messages also performed better when their wording reflected the language of the communities being targeted.
That suggests something important: people do not respond to information based only on whether it is accurate. They also respond to whether the information feels relevant, familiar and personally addressed.
But there is a danger in treating higher click-through rates as evidence that communication has actually improved.
A click is not a changed mind
This is perhaps the most important limitation of the research.
The researchers themselves acknowledge that they did not establish whether people changed their views.
They did not know whether readers even consumed the information after clicking.
And they could not determine exactly which element of the rewritten messages produced the difference because several features of the language were changed simultaneously.
So what the study really demonstrates is something narrower:
Certain styles of wording can make reliable information more clickable.
That is useful knowledge. But it is not the same thing as proving that those messages make people better informed.
The distinction is crucial because social media has trained us to confuse attention with impact.
A post that attracts 100,000 clicks may be less meaningful than one that reaches 5,000 people and genuinely improves their understanding.
Misinformation thrives in an environment where outrage, fear, novelty and emotional certainty are rewarded. If credible institutions respond by simply becoming better at attracting clicks, they may end up accepting the rules of a system that is part of the problem.
There is a fine line between speaking someone's language and manipulating them
The researchers are careful to make an important distinction. They do not argue that public-health campaigns should impersonate members of fringe communities or deliberately amplify fear.
Instead, they suggest listening to how people express their concerns and then presenting the same evidence in language that feels more relevant to them.
That is a reasonable approach.
There is nothing inherently wrong with saying to a worried parent:
“You want to keep your little one safe. Wondering what vaccinations will mean for your baby?”
In fact, acknowledging someone's anxiety before presenting evidence can make communication more humane.
But the strategy becomes problematic when understanding an audience turns into exploiting its emotional vulnerabilities.
There is a subtle difference between saying, “We understand what you're worried about,” and saying, “We know what scares you, so let's use that fear to get your attention.”
The first builds communication.
The second starts to resemble the very persuasive machinery that misinformation has perfected.
Misinformation offers something facts often don't
The study's observations about online communities point to a deeper problem.
Misinformation does not spread simply because people are incapable of recognising facts.
It can spread because it offers belonging.
A community that shares fears, suspicions and frustrations can make people feel heard. A post can sound like a friend warning another friend. Someone may feel that they are being invited into a conversation rather than lectured from a distance.
Official information, by contrast, often arrives in the language of institutions: formal, cautious and carefully qualified.
That language has advantages. It signals responsibility and avoids overstating evidence.
But it can also feel remote.
If a parent is frightened, lonely or uncertain, a government webpage filled with technical explanations may not compete emotionally with a post that says, in effect, “Someone finally understands what you're going through.”
That does not mean institutions should abandon evidence-based communication.
It means they need to understand that trust is social before it is informational.
The bigger risk: turning public health into a persuasion contest
There is a temptation to read the study as a simple lesson:
“Bad information is engaging. Therefore, good information should become more engaging.”
That is partly true.
But taken too far, it creates an uncomfortable model of public communication in which the objective becomes winning attention at any cost.
Should a public-health campaign use the same emotional hooks as an anti-vaccination influencer?
Should scientists adopt the certainty and dramatic language that make conspiracy content so attractive?
Should governments deliberately design messages around people's fears because fear generates more engagement?
Probably not.
The answer may instead be to improve the quality of communication without copying the weaknesses of misinformation.
That means being conversational without being sensational.
Personal without being manipulative.
Accessible without becoming simplistic.
And emotionally aware without turning anxiety into an advertising tool.
The lesson from the study may be bigger than “copy misinformation”
The most interesting finding here is not that factual information should imitate misinformation.
It is that accuracy alone does not determine whether information reaches people.
That should be obvious, but institutions repeatedly forget it.
People are not databases waiting for correct information to be uploaded into their brains. They interpret information through experience, identity, relationships and emotion.
If someone distrusts an institution, another government fact sheet may not solve the problem.
If someone feels ignored, another warning label may not solve it.
If someone has found friendship inside an online community, removing one misleading post may not make them abandon the community.
This is why content moderation, fact-checking and warning labels—while useful—cannot be the entire solution.
The deeper challenge is rebuilding the conditions under which people are willing to listen.
Perhaps we need less “copying” and more listening
There is a valuable idea buried in this research: listen before you communicate.
Public-health teams could spend more time understanding the questions people are actually asking.
Instead of beginning with, “What information do we need to deliver?”, they could begin with, “What is this person afraid of, confused about or trying to understand?”
That shift would not require mimicking misinformation.
It would require taking audiences seriously.
For example, a vaccination campaign could acknowledge that parents may have genuine questions about side effects, timing and what vaccination means for a particular child.
It could answer those questions directly rather than treating every question as evidence of ignorance.
That approach may be slower than producing a highly clickable advertisement.
But slow communication is not necessarily ineffective communication.
Sometimes the goal should not be to make someone click.
It should be to make them comfortable enough to keep reading, ask another question and eventually make a better-informed decision.
The real fight is over trust
The study provides an important insight into the mechanics of online communication. Familiar language can make reliable information more visible, and that is worth exploring.
But we should be careful about declaring victory simply because an advertisement attracts more attention.
Misinformation has learned how to speak to people's emotions. That does not mean trustworthy institutions should become better versions of misinformation.
They should become better communicators.
There is a difference.
The long-term answer to misinformation probably cannot be an endless arms race over who can produce the most clickable sentence.
It has to involve something harder: earning trust, understanding communities, addressing legitimate uncertainty and giving people reasons to value evidence even when the evidence is inconvenient.
Because if reliable information needs to disguise itself as misinformation to get noticed, perhaps the bigger question is not how to make facts sound more like falsehoods.
Perhaps we should be asking why the platforms and communities around us have made falsehoods so much better at getting our attention in the first place.