Recruited to push for vaccine
Social media influencers are harnessed to sway young audience on shot’s benefits
LOS ANGELES — Ellie Zeiler, 17, a TikTok creator with more than 10 million followers, received an email in June from Village Marketing, an influencer marketing agency. It said it was reaching out on behalf of another party: the White House.
Would Zeiler, a high school senior who usually posts short fashion and lifestyle videos, be willing, the agency wondered, to participate in a White House-backed campaign encouraging her audience to get vaccinated against the coronavirus?
Zeiler agreed, joining a broad, personality-driven campaign to confront an increasingly urgent challenge in the fight against the pandemic: vaccinating the youthful masses, who have the lowest inoculation rates of any eligible age group in the United States.
Fewer than half of all Americans ages 18 to 39 are fully vaccinated, compared with more than two-thirds of those older than 50, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And about 58% of those ages 12 to 17 have yet to receive a shot at all.
To reach these young people, the White House has enlisted an eclectic army of more than 50 Twitch streamers, YouTubers, TikTokers and 18-year-old pop star Olivia Rodrigo, all of them with enormous online audiences. State and local governments have begun similar campaigns, in some cases paying “local micro influencers” — those with 5,000 to 100,000 followers — up to $1,000 a month to promote COVID-19 vaccines to their fans.
The efforts are, in part, a counterattack against a rising tide of vaccine misinformation that has flooded the internet, where anti-vaccine activists can be so vociferous that some young creators say they have chosen to remain silent on vaccines to avoid a politicized backlash.
Renee DiResta, a researcher who studies misinformation at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said that although influencer campaigns can be useful, they may be no match for mass, organic online movements. She noted the contrast between creators who have been asked to spread pro-vaccine messaging versus vaccine skeptics, who have made it a personal mission to question the injections.
“That’s the asymmetric passion,” she said. “People who believe it’s going to hurt you are out there talking about it every day. They’re driving hashtags and pushing content and doing everything they can do.”
But even if the influencer campaigns amount to a sprinkler in a wildfire, some creators said, they felt compelled to join in.
“I didn’t worry about the backlash,” said Christina Najjar, 30, a TikTok star known online as Tinx. “Helping spread the word about the importance of getting vaccinated was the right thing to do.”
Najjar said she was thrilled when the White House reached out to her through her manager in June. She soon posted a question-and-answer video about the vaccines with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Instagram.
Their banter was light. Discussing what she called a “happy vaxx girl summer,” Najjar peppered Fauci with questions: Was it safe to go out for a drink? Should we be concerned about getting pregnant after getting the vaccine? Do I look 26? “You have an ageless look to you,” he replied.
“I’ll tell my Botox doctor that,” she said.