Harvard x Creators: Making Evidence-Based Public Health Information Viral (RSM Speaker Series)

The $16 billion influencer marketing industry is often seen as churning out viral videos exclusively for profit. Now imagine if we used that same playbook to disseminate evidence-based public health information. The Center for Health Communication is connecting creators with public health evidence and experts in a bid to do just that. By deploying its Creators Summit program as a field experiment on TikTok, the Center has identified simple, cost-effective, and creator-led interventions that can be deployed at scale to influence health content on such platforms.
RSM welcomes Amanda Yarnell and Kate Speer for a conversation with Visiting Scholar Jeff Hall on how “influencing the influencers” might improve health information ecosystems on social media, influence the health beliefs and behaviors of social media users, and even catalyze needed health policy change.
MODERATOR
Jeffrey Hall is a visiting scholar at RSM and a professor of communication at the University of Kansas.
SPEAKERS
Amanda Yarnell is senior director of Harvard T.H. Chan School’s Center for Health Communication and a faculty member in its Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences.
Kate Speer, a mental health advocate and marketing executive, was a participating creator in Harvard’s inaugural Creators Summit and is now working with the Center for Health Communication to scale the program.
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The Institute for Rebooting Social Media (RSM) is a three-year, “pop-up” research initiative at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center to accelerate progress towards addressing social media’s most urgent problems, including misinformation, privacy breaches, harassment, and content governance. By convening participants across industry, government, civil society, and academia in focused, time-bound collaboration, the Institute has a portfolio of research, projects, programming, and educational opportunities aimed at improving the state of digital social spaces. Learn more about RSM here: rebootingsocialmedia.org/
Be sure to also check out the brand new Applied Social Media Lab (ASML),
which gives industry-trained technologists the freedom to build social media solutions that center the public interest. Learn more about ASML and our open jobs here: asml.cyber.harvard.edu/
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