Researchers urge governments to enlist emotion when fighting fake news

Real people with relatable stories can help public agencies counter social media disinformation campaigns and “fake news” around issues such as vaccination programs, academic researchers say.

They examined how Laura Brennan, a 25-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer, used her scientifically informed yet emotionally charged social media posts to significantly shift public perceptions of Ireland’s HPV vaccination program. Her compelling personal story countered the aggressive anti-vaccine rhetoric and led to a positive turnaround in public opinion.

She worked closely with the Irish Health Service Executive (IHSE), who supported her and provided her with facts and insights into both the vaccine and cervical cancer.

Dr. Itziar Castello, Reader in Corporate Social Responsibility at Bayes Business School, City St George’s University of London, and colleagues from ESSCA and Surrey universities, concluded that the “emotional legitimacy” provided by people with real life experience of the issue can be “transferred” to the public body involved.

Laura approached the IHSE in 2015 to discuss misleading social media posts promoting scare stories claiming young people had developed serious illnesses after receiving the HPV vaccine. The vaccine is offered to adolescents in both Ireland and the UK to protect against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer.

Deploying emotional intelligence

In the paper, which has been published in Business & Society, the academics note that the anti-vaxxers’ misinformation campaign had driven Irish HPV vaccination rates down from 85% to 50% in less than two years. A counter-campaign by the IHSE “based on logic and facts had limited success in boosting vaccination uptake.”

While governments and other public bodies have worked with external partners to combat fake news, often spread by social media, this is largely confined to fact-checking or verification of official data. Previous research, the paper suggests, has not tackled misinformation aimed at attacking an organization’s “legitimacy” and the role emotion plays in concert with science in responses to such attacks.

Dr. Castello said, “The case study analysis shows the importance of emotional intelligence—of not just relying on facts and science but using emotions to take on and expose fake news. People remember how you make them feel and often that memory is stronger than their recall of facts and figures.

“That approach could have been applied to the recent riots in the UK and should be considered as the NHS rolls out the autumn COVID and flu vaccination programs. We know that misinformation has undermined vaccination campaigns ranging from MMR to shingles, COVID and flu.”

Laura’s involvement, initially as a patient advocate and then as the public face of the IHSE’s HPV campaigns, proved a turning point in the battle against the anti-vaxxers.

With extensive support from the IHSE, Laura (pictured above) raised public awareness of the vaccination program and challenged anti-vaxxer propaganda. This involved using “emotional batteries”—a metaphor used to describe how “emotional energy” is generated through positive and negative emotions sparked by first-hand accounts, mostly through social media posts.

She posted images and videos of both emotional moments involving her treatment and life-limiting diagnosis and ‘relatable’ footage of herself in the pub with friends having a normal night out.

The paper says, “Her capacity to emotionally connect with the public through social and mass media was decisive in boosting Ireland’s HPV vaccination rates to 74%.”

Co-author Dr. Marie Joachim, who teaches at the ESSCA School of Management in France, explains, “It is crucial that public institutions acknowledge emotions in their response to fake news. They need to rely on third parties like Laura to emotionally connect with the public and, in the end, regain legitimacy.”

However, the case study emphasizes the importance of the IHSE’s close and supportive relationship with Laura—ensuring she had the knowledge and confidence to forcefully rebut social media posts.