Scaling the Idea of Opinion Leadership to Address Health Misinformation: The Case for “Health Communication AI”

There is strong evidence of the impact of opinion leaders in health promotion programs. Early work by Burke-Garcia suggests that social media influencers are the opinion leaders of the digital age as they come from the communities they influence, have built trust with them, and may be useful in combating misinformation by disseminating credible and timely health information and prompting consideration of health behaviors. AI has contributed to the spread of misinformation, but it can also be a vital part of the solution, informing and educating in real time and at scale. Personalized, empathetic messaging is crucial, though, and research supports that individuals are drawn to empathetic AI responses and prefer them to human responses in some digital environments. This mimics what we know about influencers and how they approach communicating with their followers. Blending what we know about social media influencers as opinion leaders with the power and scale of AI can enable us to address the spread of misinformation. This paper reviews the knowledge base and proposes the development of something we term "Health Communication AI" - perhaps the newest form of opinion leader - to fight health misinformation.