Going viral: Social media influencers can impact how an epidemic spreads

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-06-03 09:01

International

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Social media influencers could affect how an epidemic spreads and 'flatten the curve' by sharing health-protective messages, according to international research. The study used a computer simulation of an epidemic and modelled the impact of influencers spreading competing messages that are either health‑protective or anti‑protective, and found that strong health‑protective messaging by influencers can slow down infection growth rates, reducing the total impact of the epidemic.

News release

From: The Royal Society

Social influencers reduce infection burden and modify epidemic lag in group-structured populations

Can digital (social media) influencers affect health behaviours enough to modify the course of an epidemic? For the first time, we test the hypothesis that their influence is sufficient to generate tangible effects on epidemics. We build computer simulations that incorporate small nudges from digital influencers into an epidemic to test how competing influence messages relating to health-protective behaviours affect the spread of those behaviours in a population during an epidemic, thus altering disease dynamics and infection outcomes. Digital influencers consistently affected peak and total infections. Health-protective influence flattened the epidemic curve despite equal anti-protective influence.

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Research The Royal Society, Web page Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).

Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Stanford University, USA

Funder: Partial support for this research came from a Hoffman‑Yee Grant from the Stanford Center for Human‑ Centered AI (HAI), Stanford University. The content is solely the authors’ responsibility and does not necessarily represent the views of HAI, Stanford University or Portland State University.

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