Crafting effective health appeals: Language and source credibility in amplifying tobacco control messages on social media

Amplification of informational social media posts are crucial for disseminating tobacco control messages as part of an integrated behavior change strategy. Our study explores the amplification effectiveness of fear-based, trust-based, and linguistically complex framing for tobacco control appeals from credible sources and in general. Analyzing 42,261 tweets from 102 accounts using natural language processing techniques, we found fear-based (38.75%) and complex appeals (31.53%) increased retweets, while trust-based decreased them (-37.28%). Credible sources amplified trust-based (58.98%) and fear-based (69.58%) appeals but reduced the amplification of complex messages (-11.01%). Consequently, we highlight the need for strategic framing of tobacco control messages for greater impact.