Indonesia's Twitter Experiment: Do Celebrity Endorsements Really Work?

In Indonesia, a unique experiment was carried out on Twitter to see if celebrities can truly influence people's beliefs about vaccines. The study involved 46 famous figures and organizations, with a combined following of 7. 8 million. These celebrities agreed to randomly tweet or retweet messages promoting vaccination. The goal was to understand if just seeing a celebrity's name on a tweet makes a difference. Interestingly, tweets that were clearly from a celebrity were much more likely to be liked or shared. But here's a surprising twist: mentioning sources in the tweets actually reduced how much they spread. This shows that people care more about who's saying something, not always what's being said. By tracking which celebrities tweeted when, the study found that the campaign might have changed people's views on vaccination and how they seek immunization. This suggests that celebrity endorsements can play a big role in shaping public opinion.