Rather than combating the anti-vaccination groups with facts and figures, maybe it's time to beat the propagandists at their own game and share compelling human interest stories about how vaccines really do work, writes Claire Lehmann.

In April, a Gold Coast mum shared a video online about her baby suffering from whooping cough.

She ended up in intensive care with a baby that just coughs and coughs and coughs. And it's just so hard to watch your tiny little thing they go red, and from red they go blue and sometimes they go a bit black and for a moment you think they are dead in your hands, they flop. A lot of suffering for a tiny little cute thing you love so much.

The mother was afflicted with guilt over the fact that she had refused the pertussis vaccine while pregnant, a measure which would have passed immunity onto her newborn. She posted the video as an online message to other parents.

This mother's story is just one data point, one statistic, but it spread online exponentially. It remained in the news for several weeks. While it would be hard to quantify its impact, it's quite possible that the story affected soon-to-be parents or pregnant mothers in a way that straightforward education about immunisation simply would not be capable of.

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Why? Stories that are told well have the ability to make our hearts race, our pupils dilate, to give us chills. If a story contains personal information, it has the added dimension of fomenting trust. And as any parent of a small child knows, a story is a shared experience that forges a bond between storyteller and listener.

We love good plotlines and we love heroes and villains. Pre-literate cultures told stories for thousands of years, passing them down for generations. Today we have Hollywood and YouTube, but our basic psychology remains the same.

Entire political and religious movements coalesce around shared narratives. An engaging storyline, coupled with an indelible image, can lodge inside our memories. The problem is that anti-vaccination advocates understand this, and use it to spread their message accordingly.

Now that online content sharing is relatively cheap and easy, those who are naturally skilled at creating propaganda naturally do.

On Sherri Tenpenny's Facebook page, which is "liked" by more than 196,000 people, she provides story after story of adverse events after vaccination, hesitant parents being "bullied" by doctors, and medically complicated childhood deaths (ultimately pinned on vaccines).

On Naturalnews.com and AgeofAutism.com one finds a cartulary of stories and anecdotes about injuries, deaths and corporate conspiracies.

All of this increases the salience of negative outcomes, while ignoring their statistical probability.

When the salience of negative outcomes is spread through social media or by word of mouth, it contributes to a feedback loop - an availability cascade - where their perceived likelihood is vastly exaggerated.

Anti-vax propagandists capitalise on the availability cascade while infusing their content with a Manichean struggle of good versus evil.

This kind of content is not something that is easily countered with scientific evidence. In contrast to real-life anecdotes, statistics are (necessarily) removed and abstract. The use of peer-reviewed evidence is easily rebuffed if one has been led to think the process of peer-review is flawed. In fact, trying to convince someone that they are wrong through an appeal to logic is likely to backfire. No-one wants be told that they are both wrong and stupid.

Rather, what pro-vaccine parents and practitioners ought to consider is utilising similar approaches to those that are used by the anti-vaccination community. That is, drawing on story-telling and imagery in creating memorable content and long-lasting impressions.

Because most people vaccinate their children, most people have a story to tell. In "Story and Science: How providers and parents can utilise storytelling to combat anti-vaccine misinformation", Ashley Shelby and Karen Ernst, who run the US blog MomsWhoVax relay a story told on the website - one which they describe as "the greatest story never told":

When my son was two days old, he received his first hepatitis B shot. Nothing happened. When my son was one month old, he received a second hepatitis B shot. Nothing happened. When he was two months old he received the rotavirus vaccines, the pneumococcal vaccine, and Pentacel, a shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis heamophilus influenza b and polio. Nothing happened and nothing happened at four months when he received another dose of each*.

The mother ends her story this way:

Earlier I said that "nothing happened", but that isn't true. Behind the scenes, my son's body was mounting antibodies to the antigens in the vaccines, a response that, should he ever be exposed to the actual disease, will help protect him.

Everyone in the community has an interest in reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Vaccination is the most effective way to achieve this. Since most of us do vaccinate (both ourselves and our children) it might be worth our while to talk about it - reinforcing it as the social norm.

And those - like the Gold Coast mum - who have experienced vaccine hesitation, but who have changed their minds, have a powerful story to tell. To promote vaccination, it's a good idea to let that story spread.

*Based on the US immunisation schedule. See the Australian schedule.

Claire Lehmann works in communications in Sydney and is the founder and editor of Quillette Magazine.