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Know the Best Way to Fight an Infodemic?
- By
- September 15, 2025
- CBR - Behavioral Science
In the midst of the COVID-19 health crisis, the World Health Organization’s director general said, “we’re not just fighting a pandemic, we’re fighting an infodemic.” That fall, WHO issued a joint statement with the United Nations and seven other organizations describing an infodemic as “an overabundance of information, both online and offline. It includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information to undermine the public health response and advance alternative agendas of groups or individuals.”
While public-health experts grappled with how best to fight the spread of the virus, Chicago Booth’s Erika Kirgios and her team considered the best way to fight the infodemic. Through two field experiments, the researchers tested the effectiveness of status quo messaging—sharing information about the pandemic as direct statements, consistent with best practices followed by WHO and other policymakers—versus Q&A communication—sharing the same information about the pandemic in question-and-answer format. To test the impact of this messaging style across different cultural contexts, they ran one of the experiments in Michigan and the other in the West African country of Ghana.
They find that people were more engaged when they received information in a question-and-answer format rather than as a direct statement of fact. The experiments provide a clear takeaway for fighting future public-health crises.
In Michigan, nearly 30,000 residents opted to get texts with information about COVID-19 from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services between November and December 2020. The Michiganders were randomly assigned to receive the texts in either Q&A or direct statement formats, while a separate control group received no information.
Participants in the direct statement group were sent texts such as, “COVID-19 can be spread by people who do not have symptoms.” Meanwhile, those in the Q&A group instead were asked, “Can COVID-19 be spread by people who do not have symptoms?” and were invited to submit what they believed to be the answer, by either texting “1” for yes or “2” for no.
“Many public-health crises are exacerbated by misinformation, so getting people to engage with and adopt factual information is critical.”
—Erika Kirgios
If these participants texted back within 24 hours, they received the correct answer immediately. Otherwise, the researchers would follow up with the answer after the 24 hours were up. Either way, participants in the Q&A group ultimately received exactly the same information as those in the direct statement group.
Over the course of the experiment, participants were also invited to receive more information on COVID, both in general terms and on specific topics such as how to wear a mask properly or grocery shop safely. The Q&A group was, on average, nearly 20 percent more likely to seek out the additional specific information than the direct statement group was.
Moreover, four times during the experiment, participants were asked to report on whether they adhered to pandemic-related health recommendations such as handwashing, mask wearing, and social distancing. Those who received Q&A-style information were 4 percent more likely to adhere to health guidelines than those who received information as direct statements, per the responses.
But they were 12 percent less likely to seek out general information than those in the direct statement group, and they were also more likely to opt out of receiving further texts. Participants in the Q&A group received more messages in total, which the researchers believe could have contributed to fatigue.
In Ghana, more than 11,000 residents across the country agreed to be sent about four texts per week in December 2020 and January 2021.
The experiment worked exactly the same way as the one in Michigan. About twice a week, participants in the direct statement condition received a text message sharing a fact about COVID-19, with information such as, “Even if you and another person are both wearing masks, you need to stay 1 m apart to be safe.” Meanwhile, those in the Q&A group were sent questions about those same facts: “If you and another person are both wearing masks, do you still need to stay 1 m apart to stay safe?”
Technical issues with the phone lines in Ghana may have contributed to overall low response rates, which topped out at 3.5 percent, as opposed to 40 percent in Michigan. That said, Q&A-style texts led to more engagement; the group that received this messaging was 43 percent more likely to seek out additional information on specific topics than the direct statement group.
However, because too few Ghanaian participants responded to text messages to gather reliable data on self-reported adherence to public-health guidelines, the researchers reported that they can’t be sure that this increased engagement with facts about COVID-19 translated to changes in behavior. And, as was the case in Michigan, there was no difference between the direct statement and Q&A groups when it came to seeking out more general information.
Questions may stimulate curiosity in a way that direct statements cannot, thus boosting the perceived value of the information, write Kirgios and her coauthors. Because the Q&A format was particularly useful in prompting users to seek out specific information, the researchers speculate that curiosity may be more intense when it comes to closely related rather than broad ranging topics. For example, a question that makes someone think about the amount of protection provided by a mask may lead them to be more interested in a tutorial about do-it-yourself mask making—but not necessarily in information about COVID shots.
Given that receiving multiple Q&A-style text messages could get tiring or annoying, the researchers also explored the effects of using the same strategy on social media instead. On Facebook, they compared the effectiveness of two public-service ads that encouraged people to click on a government link to learn more about vaccines. The Q&A-designed ad generated over 9 percent more unique clicks to the website per dollar spent than a direct statement ad.
Overall, across platforms, the researchers find Q&A-style communication to be compelling and cost-effective. “Many public-health crises are exacerbated by misinformation, so getting people to engage with and adopt factual information is critical,” says Kirgios. The research validates the approach embraced by many marketers, and the results demonstrate that teasing readers with a question can have broad policy implications as well.
Erika Kirgios, Susan Athey, Angela L. Duckworth, Dean Karlan, Michael Luca, Katherine L. Milkman, and Molly Offer-Westort, “Does Q&A Boost Engagement? Health Messaging Experiments in the US and Ghana,” Management Science, September 2025.
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