Spoken word TikTok part of €100k vaccine promo plan aimed at young people

A six month TikTok campaign is aiming to provide information on Covid-19 vaccines for young people.

The Department of Health is spending €100,000 on a social media campaign with student scientist volunteers promoting vaccines for young people.

The campaign is running on social channels Instagram and Tik-Tok as @scicommcollective_ire. 

A spokeswoman for the department said the project is expected to run for at least six months.

She said: “A budget of €100k has been allocated to support the collective to make creative content and to amplify their voices. Sponsored posts amount to about €20k per month.” The 12 young scientists are not being paid, but they can avail of meetings with state scientists to discuss data.

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Andrew McGovern, a PhD fellow and teaching assistant at the Department of Biological Sciences UL, is one of the scientists involved.

So far his most popular content is a spoken word post on the mental health impacts of the lockdowns. This has been viewed over 71,000 times on Instagram and 1,284 times on TikTok.

He said: “It’s been a different kind of difficult for young people, it’s been a loss of certain years that we really care about and everyone who is older looks back on and hold precious.” 

And while some people might question why anyone would do all this for free, Mr McGovern said he feels it gives him more freedom to say what he wants.

He said the campaign seems to resonate the most with people who considering getting vaccinated but are unsure.

“I think there is little point in doing this if you are just singing to the choir,” he said. “It’s great to reassure young people who’re on the pathway. Personally, I would be thinking about people who need to be rea

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ssured.” So far the TikTok account has been more successful, with some posts viewed over 120,000 times.

“I think there’s been more comments on TikTok as well,” he said. 

“More people engaging in the conversation. Not all positive comments, but I think that’s a good thing.” Mr McGovern gets ideas for his posts from listening to his friends’ vaccine questions, he said. And he is happy to see more access now to vaccines for young people from this week.