A strategic public service announcement (PSA) with stereotypical vaccine messages and genuine clips from Fox News has led to the adoption of the COVID-19 vaccine in red counties, according to a large-scale randomized controlled trial.
In 1,014 counties, about 104,036 people who otherwise would not have been vaccinated had they not noticed PSA were vaccinated, for an average of 103 additional vaccines depending on the county treated (P = . 097), Timothy J reported. Ryan, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues from Science Advances.
Ryan’s team created a video of a 27-second PSA of former President Donald Trump approving the COVID vaccine on Fox News. They then placed tactical classified ads on YouTube in counties that were behind on vaccination. The PSA was viewed 11. 6 million times among 6 million exclusive viewers. On Fox News’ YouTube channel alone, the PSA aired 200,000 times before clips of Fox News personalities.
Ryan and his colleagues estimated that the crusade prevented 839 deaths, with a cost of about $115 consistent with what was saved.
Co-author Bradley Larsen, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis of the National Bureau of Economic Research told MedPage Today that ad spending is significant, with an average of one vaccine consistent with the advertising dollar.
“This is anything we can use in practice to try to triumph over political polarization and attack social problems,” he said.
Co-author Steven Green, PhD, of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, added that while there has been resistance to Trump as a messenger, his findings showed that PSA works and laid the groundwork for long-term studies exploring public fitness messages versus stereotypical.
“The public fitness network is a very liberal network and a very skeptical and suspicious network of Donald Trump,” he told MedPage Today. “There is so much resistance. . . to use Donald Trump as a messenger. “
The researchers noted that in the fall of 2021, “counties that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump experienced COVID-related death rates nearly 3 times higher than counties that voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. “
Vaccination rates vary between groups, but the difference in adoption across political divides is more pronounced.
“90 percent of Democrats have been vaccinated and only 60 percent of Republicans have been vaccinated and that hole doesn’t seem to be closing,” Larsen said. “We felt there was a possibility here. . . that if you target the right messenger that the political right would trust, then you can really make a difference and develop vaccines. “
Ryan and colleagues concluded that “whether the dividing line is political or not, our study suggests that fitness advocates would do well to think about which messengers have specific weight among target populations. “
Green noted that first, several of the co-authors were interested in employing the military as “clue givers” for public fitness messages in peak COVID years because both sides of the political aisle have good reputations in the military.
Amelia B. Finaret, PhD, a professor of global fitness studies at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, told MedPage Today that while the effects were significant, the magnitude of the effect on about a hundred vaccines according to the county was still relatively small.
“Even if someone sees an ad, they may not absorb it. . . It may not have the impact it needs. And that’s possibly why the duration of the effect is small,” said Finaret, who was not involved in the study.
However, he said he still believes the study has led to a greater link between public fitness messages and misinformation.
“Right now, there’s a lot of communication about how we deal with incorrect information online, meaning how it affects other people’s fitness decisions,” Fineret said. “I think having more wisdom about how other people are affected through the messages they would see, regardless of what they tell them to do, or whether it’s more subconscious or open messages, I think understanding that is incredibly vital in our context of understanding incorrect information online. “
Over a two-week period, from mid-October 2021 to the end of the month, classified ads ran in more than 1000 counties. The researchers used the county point so they could compare them with CDC data. Counties leaning toward Trump were known as voting data since 2016. The PSA was used as an advertisement on YouTube, and the authors claimed that YouTube’s mysterious set of rules is a limitation to their work.
Larsen believes that long-term studies in the U. S. Scientists in the U. S. and around the world use the same mechanism of political messengers against stereotypes to convey other messages of public fitness.
Rachael Robertson is part of the corporate and research team at MedPage Today, and also covers obstetrics and gynecology news. His print articles, data, and audio stories have appeared in Everyday Health, Gizmodo, The Bronx Times, and several podcasts. Follow
The study was funded through the Vaccine Confidence Fund.
The authors reported any conflicts of interest, and neither did Finaret.