They pop up regularly on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube: videos featuring influencers who have no medical background but still offer health advice. “They do so from a range of motives, which become apparent in the styles and arguments they use,” says Yvette Linders, Assistant Professor in Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University. On behalf of rhetoric knowledge centre Peitho, she conducts research into the rhetoric and motives of influencers. “Some influencers genuinely want to help people by sharing apparent success experiences, while others hope that offering life-improving advice will get them more followers, and others still promote medical products as part of an underlying revenue model.”
This is how influencers lead you astray with health advice
On social media, influencers are increasingly taking on the role of health advisers. For example, some of them advise people to stop using sunscreen or hormonal contraception. But how do you recognise medical misinformation, especially when it sounds so convincing? “Everyone is susceptible to it to some extent.”
For her research, Linders analysed over 80 health videos from Dutch-speaking influencers to gain more insight into their style and argumentation. What did she observe? “Influencers very often first outline a problem and then offer an easy solution, a quick fix,” Linders explains. “Some of the solutions offered may be harmful to people's health. Consider the advice to avoid using sunscreen for natural skin. Or the idea that you can solve nearly all your health problems by following a carnivore diet, whereas for most people that can actually cause health problems. Then there is advice that has no medical effects, but is only meant to get people to spend money, such as the call to buy a necklace to absorb radiation.”
More resilient
According to Linders, there are several reasons that highlight the importance of her research. “You increasingly hear that people with medical complaints first follow an influencer's advice and only then see a doctor. As a result, they delay medical care, with all the potential risks this entails. In addition, advice from influencers increases the risk of harmful choices and thoughtless purchasing of products. We need more insight into their means of persuasion and fallacies to help people become more resilient to these tactics.”
In her research, Linders focused not only on the arguments used by influencers, but also on their environment and appearance. “Because those contribute to persuasion as well,” Linders explains. “Take a muscular male influencer, scantily clad, telling you that you can increase your muscle strength by consumung raw dairy products. Or influencers touting certain fitness products in a gym. In doing so, they position themselves as experts.”
Argumentation and fallacies
To analyse the influencers' argumentation, Linders focused on three classic modes of persuasion: logos (logic), ethos (character of the speaker), and pathos (emotion). “The technique they use depends on the topic,” Linders explains. “For example, with symptoms that could be caused by hormonal problems, influencers play up to people's emotions (pathos) by asking questions such as: “Do you also experience pain? It could be due to contraception.” They then immediately offer people hope by providing alternative solutions. On topics that are further removed from the viewer, such as the use of water filters, they deploy more substantive argumentation (logos) from the outset, for example by claiming with all sorts of complicated jargon that tap water contains harmful substances. In such cases, they also try to arouse negative emotions such as fear and anger (pathos), for example towards the government.”
In their arguments, influencers are guilty of a number of fallacies, according to Linders. “A common one is the hasty generalisation: ‘It worked for me, so it works for everyone.’ They also often use a straw man, attributing an exaggerated or distorted point of view to institutions such as the government, only to counter it. In addition, they regularly appeal to nature, for example when claiming that skin can handle sunshine just fine without protection. Finally, another common fallacy is ‘after this, therefore because of this’ (post hoc ergo propter hoc): someone feels better after drinking raw milk, and concludes that this is due to the milk, whereas it could also have other causes.”
Linders calls on people to be alert to these fallacies. “They seem very reasonable, and everyone is susceptible to them to some extent. Still, it is important to look critically at the arguments used, to assess whether a medical opinion is solidly based.” Now that Linders has mapped the means of persuasion, the next step is to find out how recipients rate influencers' medical advice. The ultimate goal of Linders' research is to develop an educational module for secondary school pupils. “This group is especially susceptible to what influencers say. It is important that they learn to think critically and recognise fallacies. Just because a story sounds logical doesn't mean it's true.”
Want to know more about this research? Listen to the recent interview with Yvette Linders in the Villa VdB program on NPO Radio 1 (only available in Dutch).
Photo: Humphrey M via Unsplash
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