Drawing on research conducted with colleagues into Arabic-language social media narratives about Swedish child welfare services, Dana Sofi explains why correcting false claims is rarely enough to restore institutional trust. Disinformation becomes powerful when personal testimony, fear and identity combine to create compelling versions of social reality
In the early 2020s, Swedish child welfare services became the target of an intense social media campaign. Posts accused authorities of ‘kidnapping’ children from migrant, particularly Muslim, families.
The controversy became known as the LVU campaign, after the Swedish law regulating compulsory care of young people. It spread far beyond individual disputes between families and authorities. Claims circulated internationally, often presenting Swedish child welfare as hostile to Muslim families.
Together with Jonas Stier and Emmie Wahlström, and in a later study also with Helena Blomberg, I examined Arabic-language Facebook and YouTube material published between 2021 and 2023. Our first study examined how Swedish child welfare services were portrayed online. A subsequent study focused more closely on how particular claims became credible and developed into a shared story.
We did not set out to determine whether every individual allegation was true or false. We wanted to understand how certain accounts became persuasive.
That distinction matters. If we treat disinformation only as a problem of incorrect facts, we may misunderstand why some narratives become so powerful.
Our research found three recurring claims: families were victims of child welfare malpractice, removed children suffered, and migrant families lived in fear.
But their persuasive power came not only from what was said. It also came from how the stories were told.
Personal testimony was especially important. References to exact places, times and specific details made storytellers appear knowledgeable and credible. Emotional accounts of frightened parents and suffering children made the stories difficult to approach as abstract questions of policy or law.
Our research found three recurring claims: families were victims of child welfare malpractice, removed children suffered, and migrant families lived in fear
People rarely encounter controversial claims as isolated pieces of information. Claims arrive embedded in stories about injustice, vulnerability, morality and identity. When a narrative resonates with existing fears or experiences, a factual correction may have less persuasive force than a personal testimony.
Facts still matter. But factual accuracy is only one part of the struggle over credibility.
The process did not stop with criticism of child welfare services.
In some of the material, individual cases became evidence for a much larger story. Sweden was portrayed as morally corrupt. Western institutions were presented as hostile to Muslim values. Influential online actors reframed disputes over child protection as part of a broader conflict between Islam and the West.
In our earlier study, we described how some influential figures acted as ‘digital imams’. They did more than comment on individual cases. They connected them to religious identity, moral decline and perceived persecution.
Social media makes this transformation easier. A testimony about one family can be repeated, reinterpreted and connected to other stories. Over time, repetition can create a coherent narrative in which new events appear to confirm what audiences already believe.
Influential online actors reframed disputes over child protection as part of a broader conflict between Islam and the West
The issue then shifts from whether an authority acted correctly in one case to questions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, good and evil, trusted communities and distrusted institutions. This is how a child welfare dispute can become a vehicle for wider polarisation.
Importantly, our material represents highly engaged users; in particular, Arabic-language online spaces. It cannot be used to generalise about migrants or Muslims as groups.
Public authorities, understandably, respond to false or misleading information by publishing correct information. They should continue to do so.
But our findings suggest that corrections alone may not be enough. In some discussions, factual counterarguments, rather than weakening the existing story, were absorbed into it. Attempts to defend child welfare practice could be interpreted through an already established narrative of institutional hostility.
This is also why dismissing such narratives simply as falsehoods can be counterproductive. Our research suggests that they may express perceived vulnerability, institutional distance and fears that are real to those communicating them, even when particular claims are misleading or inaccurate. Treating the problem only as a deficit of correct information risks overlooking these underlying concerns.
More effective communication therefore requires institutions to distinguish between correcting false claims and understanding why those claims resonate in the first place. Listening to grievances does not mean accepting misinformation. It means recognising that credibility is built through relationships as well as through facts.
This creates a difficult problem for democratic institutions. When citizens distrust the institution providing the correction, the institution cannot simply produce more information and expect trust to follow.
Effective communication requires institutions to distinguish between correcting false claims and understanding why those claims resonate in the first place
For child welfare organisations, this means combining accurate information with multilingual communication and longer-term trust-building. It can also mean working with civil society organisations and trusted intermediaries that can communicate across institutional and community boundaries.
None of this means accepting false claims or abandoning children’s rights. Nor does it mean that every criticism of public institutions is disinformation. Institutions must remain open to legitimate criticism, including concerns about discrimination, communication and unequal treatment.
The lesson reaches far beyond Swedish child welfare. Disinformation thrives not only on falsehoods, but on distrust, social distance and competing claims to moral authority.
This matters for democracy. As a recent Loop contribution shows, political trust can shape democratic trajectories, while another discusses how misinformation can erode confidence in democratic institutions. Political trust should never be unconditional, and democratic institutions should be scrutinised. But when distrust becomes so deep that official information itself is treated as evidence of deception, correcting individual claims will not resolve the underlying problem.
Democracies cannot fact-check their way out of every crisis of trust. Facts remain indispensable. But when distrust has become part of people’s social reality, the harder political task is rebuilding the credibility of the institutions that communicate them.
