The Government is targeting young people with a €100,000 social media campaign aiming to promote the uptake of Covid-19 vaccines.
The Irish Examiner reports that the campaign is running on social channels Instagram and TikTok as @scicommcollective_ire, with student scientist volunteers promoting vaccines for young people.
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A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said the project is expected to run for at least six months.
“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,” she said.
The 12 young scientists are not being paid, but they can avail of meetings with State scientists to discuss data.
'Different kind of difficult for young people'
One of the scientists involved is Andrew McGovern, a PhD fellow and teaching assistant at the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Limerick.
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Mr McGovern’s most popular social media post is a spoken word piece on the mental health impacts of the lockdowns. It has been viewed over 71,000 times on Instagram and 1,284 times on TikTok.
“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,” he said.
Mr McGovern said the campaign seems to resonate the most with people who are considering getting vaccinated but remain unsure.
I think there is little point in doing this if you are just singing to the choir
He said he gets ideas for his posts from listening to his friends’ vaccine questions.
“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 reassured.”
Posts on the TikTok account have been viewed over 120,000 times.
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