Picture this: you’re a tired, slightly anxious new parent, scrolling through Facebook in the quiet hours of the evening. You love your baby more than anything, and you want to make the right choices, but the constant stream of opinions about vaccines can feel overwhelming. Suddenly a message appears on your screen: “Protect the community and your kids by booking their vaccinations today.” It sounds official, sensible, and a little distant. A few posts later, another message asks: “Do you know all the effects of childhood vaccinations on your babies?” This one feels different. It sounds like a friend who understands your worry, not an institution giving instructions. Both messages link to the same reliable, government-backed information about vaccination. But in our recently published research, the second message was about 52% more likely to be clicked on. That simple difference in wording, not in facts, not in sources, not in images, made the exact same information noticeably more appealing. We wanted to find out whether changing how factual information is presented online could help it reach people who might otherwise scroll past it. The answer, it turns out, is that language carries meaning long before anyone reads the actual information. The way we talk about a topic tells people whether we are on their side, whether we respect their fears, and whether we are worth listening to. Even when the underlying evidence is identical, the words around it can open a door or close it.
To understand why this matters so much, we need to talk about misinformation and the messy way it moves through our social media feeds. Misinformation is false information that is shared without the intention to cause harm. Disinformation, on the other hand, is deliberately created and shared to deceive. Both are serious problems, but false claims are only part of the story. In our earlier research, we spent time in Australian Facebook communities that shared anti-vaccination and far-right narratives. What surprised us was that people in those communities didn’t only share obviously false stories. They also shared articles from moderate, mainstream news sources. They simply chose a narrow set of topics that matched their existing world views, stories about government overreach, about children’s health, about personal freedom, while ignoring everything else. This meant that even mostly accurate news articles could be used to reinforce a deeply suspicious outlook. The problem isn’t just that people are being fed lies. It’s that they are filtering the entire world through a lens shaped by fear, identity, and belonging. And that has real human consequences. Our research described people slowly withdrawing from loved ones and from mainstream information as they became more involved in fringe communities. They weren’t just changing their opinions. They were changing their relationships, pulling away from the people who cared about them and from the sources that might have offered a different perspective. This makes the challenge of communicating reliable information much deeper than simply correcting a false statement.
Governments, researchers, and social media platforms have all tried to fight back in their own ways. Governments provide factual resources and public health campaigns. Researchers investigate misleading claims and try to debunk them with evidence. Fact-checking can help, but it only works when people trust the fact-checker and can understand the explanation. Social media platforms have also tried removing false or misleading content, or making it less visible. Some studies of Meta’s pandemic response found that many regulated Facebook pages declined in performance, although some kept growing anyway. Platforms have added warning labels to misleading posts and shown them to fewer people. But users are clever, and they quickly found ways around the restrictions, using coded language, sharing links to less moderated platforms, and building communities in spaces where oversight is weak. In April 2025, Meta stopped using independent fact-checkers in the United States and began introducing Community Notes, a system where users write and rate explanations that appear alongside posts. These efforts have had some impact, but they all share a fundamental limitation. They are designed to catch people who are already looking for information, or to stop false content from spreading. They don’t solve the deeper question: how do you get reliable information in front of someone who isn’t searching for it at all? Someone who has learned to distrust official sources, who feels more comfortable in a Facebook group full of worried parents, who has built their daily online routine around places where their concerns are taken seriously.
So we tried a different approach. Instead of asking people to come to the information, we decided to bring the information to them in the language they already use. We spent months observing Australian Facebook communities that shared anti-vaccination and far-right narratives. Alongside the posts and comments, we noticed something important: these communities offered companionship. They were not just places where people argued about facts. They were places where people felt heard. A message could sound like a friend sharing worries about a child, not like a lecturer correcting a mistake. We used these observations to develop three fictional audience profiles, called personas. Jennifer was a young mother concerned about vaccination. Patrick was a retired teacher worried about his grandchildren’s future. Aaron was a young man interested in fitness and technology. These were not real people, but they represented real patterns we saw in the communities. For Jennifer, we wrote ads using personal, caring language, the kind a close friend might use when talking about a difficult decision. For Patrick, we used an authoritative, explanatory tone, one that respected his intelligence and his desire to understand. For Aaron, we used a motivational tone, encouraging him to take charge and check the facts for himself. We then compared these carefully crafted messages with neutral versions of the same ads. Each pair used the same image and linked to the same government or government-affiliated resource. The sponsor and advertising settings stayed exactly the same. The only thing that changed was the wording.
The results were striking. In 11 out of the 12 comparisons, people were more likely to click on an ad when its wording reflected the language used in the communities we had studied. Ads about school education received clicks 6% of the time when they used familiar language, but only 1.1% of the time when they used neutral wording. That means the language inspired by the communities the ads were trying to reach was roughly five times more likely to be clicked on. For vaccination ads, the difference was smaller but still meaningful. Those with familiar language were clicked on 0.98% of the time, compared to 0.65% for those with neutral wording. That may sound like a tiny difference, but in the world of online advertising, even small improvements can translate into thousands of additional clicks. And remember, the information behind both versions was identical. We were not offering different facts, better evidence, or more compelling arguments. We were simply changing the way the invitation was phrased, making it sound less like a public health announcement and more like someone who understood the reader’s perspective. It’s a bit like the difference between a stranger shouting directions from across the street and a neighbor walking beside you, pointing the way. Both might lead you to the same place, but one feels much more trustworthy. Of course, we have to be honest about what these findings do and don’t show. We didn’t prove that anyone’s mind was changed. We don’t know whether people actually read the linked pages, and Facebook’s delivery system influenced who saw each advertisement. We also changed several features of the wording at the same time, so we can’t identify exactly which feature made the difference. But even with those caveats, the pattern was consistent and powerful.
So what does this mean in practice? For public health teams, nonprofit organizations, and anyone trying to combat misinformation online, the lesson is not to create cleverer slogans or manipulate people with emotional tricks. It’s to listen first. If you want to reach people who have drifted into fringe communities, or who are simply wary of official messages, start by understanding how they talk about their concerns. What words do they use? What questions are they asking? What fears and hopes are hiding beneath the surface? Then test different ways of presenting the same evidence, not by changing the facts, but by changing the tone, the framing, and the level of empathy. This does not mean impersonating community members or pretending to be someone you’re not. It doesn’t mean amplifying fear to attract attention. It just means adopting language that speaks directly to the questions and concerns of the people you’re trying to reach. For a vaccination campaign, this could mean testing messages that acknowledge parents’ worries instead of brushing them aside. Imagine a message that says: “You want to keep your little one safe. Wondering what vaccinations will mean for your baby?” That one sentence acknowledges the parent’s deepest hope and their uncertainty in the same breath. It doesn’t judge, it doesn’t lecture, and it doesn’t demand immediate compliance. It simply opens a door. A follow-up study could then examine whether readers understood the information, whether they felt more confident in making a decision, and whether they were more likely to discuss it with a doctor. In a world where false claims spread faster than ever, and where trust in institutions continues to erode, the way we say things may be just as important as what we say. Sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is to speak to people in a voice that sounds like understanding.