The Resonance Gap: Why Accurate Health Guidance Still Gets Ignored

Introduce the core problem: in public health emergencies, accuracy alone does not secure attention or adherence, especially inside a social media environment optimized for emotional activation.

The "resonance gap" is the distance between what official guidance says and what audiences actually absorb. That gap is not primarily an information problem—it is an emotional design problem. When emotionally neutral content competes with emotionally charged misinformation inside platforms built to reward engagement, the neutral content loses by default.

This post previews the paper's central argument: the emotional deficit in official messaging is not accidental, and closing it requires treating resonance as a design variable, not an afterthought.