In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Naheed Dosani was going quietly viral. On TikTok, the palliative care physician and health justice activist had posted advice from Health Canada, overlaid to catchy music.
Along with the music, Dosani snaps, and text boxes appear on screen: reminders to wash your hands, stay home if you’re ill and avoid touching your face. The video was viewed more than 100,000 times. His subsequent videos, where he addresses everything from myths about palliative care to the experiences of homeless COVID-19 patients who cannot properly self-isolate, have also attracted thousands of viewers.
Speaking to the Star Tuesday, Dosani said he was surprised the platform hasn’t been adopted to get out strong public health messaging to Ontario’s young adults — a demographic that is now leading daily new infections across the province.
“The platforms that we’re seeing used specifically in Ontario are the press conferences during the middle of a workday,” he said. “And they’re in the news media, which reaches a certain amount of people but does not have the kind of impact or penetration that we would need to really be able to turn the tide around in this pandemic, particularly when trying to reach young people.”
Additionally, the tone of the messaging places blame on young people, focusing on personal responsibility. “I don’t think that people under 40 respond to that kind of messaging in general,” he said, continuing that save for industries where news consumption is high, people aren’t often tuning in to daily press conferences.
“I can’t understand why public health messaging hasn’t prioritized these (social media) platforms for COVID-19 education,” Dosani said. “We’ve been shaming people at press conferences, and it hasn’t worked. It’s really (about) trying to communicate creatively.”
On TikTok and Instagram, it’s possible to deliver bite-sized and effective information that explicitly targets people that fall into the under-40 age bracket. “We have a higher likelihood of attaining success if we’re able to reach this population in the way that they enjoy and consume media,” he said. Combining messages with topics that are trending means that people will connect with it, he said.
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Dosani suggested that involving clinicians that use the platforms or influencers and celebrities to get out the proper messaging could be highly effective in convincing younger audiences of what hurdles they still face in the pandemic.
Ivana Yelich, a spokesperson for Ontario Premier Doug Ford, told the Star the province has recently launched a social media campaign aimed at targeting a younger audience “in hotspots and provincewide through various channels including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.”
Additionally, “the Premier’s daily press conference has been highly effective when it comes to speaking directly to Ontarians and we have seen countless times clips turned into content,” which are then shared on the popular Instagram page 6ixBuzz, TikTok and YouTube, Yelich said.
Claire Tsai, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said that younger adults may be struggling to receive messages related to the continued risk posed by the virus because they don’t see themselves reflected in groups that are high risk.
“It’s possible that the younger group thinks that it’s less likely to happen to them because they have stronger immune (systems) — and even if they get it, they’re probably not going to suffer too much,” Tsai said, adding that the first impression with COVID-19 is that those who are most vulnerable are those in long-term-care.
Messaging, then, should focus on the risks that exist across demographics, Tsai said.
Catching people at the same time that they’re making a decision could be effective, Tsai added. “Messaging, or any kind of behavioural interventions … are going to be more effective if it happens at the right time.”
If someone sees a poster explaining the need for physical distance, they could quickly become distracted and lose track of the message once they start having a good time at a restaurant, Tsai said. Cognitively, people are busy while they’re eating, she explained. “I don’t think this kind of behaviour is entirely due to their lack of responsibility … It’s just that it’s not salient in their mind, they’re distracted.”
Tsai speculated that small reminders, like cards placed on individual tables at bars and restaurants, could be a constant reminder that helps drive home the need for continued caution.
Jessica Mudry, an associate professor at Ryerson University’s school of professional communication, said illustrations and visualization can help explain the science behind COVID-19 in terms everyone can understand. So too can making the coronavirus a character.
“If I think about good public health messaging in the past, they do things like anthropomorphize. Make COVID a character, and then explain to us in very human terms how we are to avoid that thing.”
Hyping up a pending second wave “is not good public health messaging,” added Mudry.
Good messaging, she said, explains the situation calmly, while offering metaphors so that people can understand how the virus acts in the world and how it may behave if they become infected.
While Dosani isn’t convinced that social media is going to save the day when it comes to the pandemic messaging, he said the government needs to rethink its approach.
“Cases for people under 40 are going up and people under 40 are not connecting with our messaging as is. We need a total rethink,” he said. “Part of that strategy ... should focus on being more engaging, innovative, and positive and should include consideration of the platforms that the people under 40 are using.”