A new Australian government advertisement to raise awareness about COVID-19, featuring a young woman gasping for air in a hospital bed, has been criticized for leaning into scare tactics and for urging vaccination among a group who are still not eligible for the recommended vaccine.
The ad also carries a message to stay home and get tested, while another ad shows a parade of arms bearing bandages after vaccination, with the tagline: “Arm yourself against COVID-19.”
The first ad “leans very, very strongly into scare tactics and fear,” Murdoch Children’s Research Institute research fellow Jessica Kaufman said.
She viewed the ad as manipulative and said it could increase distrust in the government.
“We’ve seen with vaccination in particular that fear campaigns or scary messages about diseases can actually cause people to become more fearful of vaccine side effects,” she said.
Kaufman also criticized the decision to target the ad at younger people who are not yet eligible to receive the recommended vaccine.
“They’re really targeting young people because I think they think that the young people are breaking the rules in Sydney, but it’s muddied by saying: ‘Stay at home, and by the way, book your vaccination that you’re not eligible for because we don’t have enough of it,’” Kaufman said.
Kaufman is part of a team that has been researching vaccine acceptance. Her team has provided a report to the federal government.
“We’ve been saying it for months and months and months that we know what people need,” she said. “It’s not rocket science... I don’t really understand what the resistance to evidence is. It’s mysterious to me.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the graphic ad on Monday.
“It was only a few weeks ago that our very critics were saying that the advertising needed to be stronger, far stronger,” he said.
University of Sydney social science professor Julie Leask said criticism of the use of fear in the hospital ad was misplaced because that was “primarily stay-at-home messaging.”
The tagline is: “Stay home. Get Tested. Book your vaccine.”
“Arm yourself” is Australia’s official vaccine campaign. Leask said it was “simple, dry and safe.”
She is an expert on responding to vaccine hesitancy and improving vaccination campaigns.
“It’s a low political risk, safe campaign for now, given the supply constraints,” Leask said.
“The time for those more stronger, more emotionally engaging messages is when we have enough supply, because if you emotionally motivate people to vaccinate too strongly now and they can’t access vaccination, they’ll get angry, and they’ll disengage and you might actually then undermine their motivation to get vaccinated in future,” she said.
Leask said the “arm yourself” campaign was “fairly neutral, very bland,” but did appeal to a sense of social responsibility.
Leask and Kaufman praised the government for the diversity of bodies represented in the ad, but criticized the decision not to show anyone from the shoulders up.
“They are headless bodies, so we’re not identifying personally with the people being vaccinated,” Leask said.
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