K-Pop Fans Helped COVID-19 Public Health Messaging Go Viral

Three years ago, as part of the public health messaging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Wear A Mask campaign on social media. The campaign gained impressive traction after WHO issued a tweet on Twitter thanking BTS, a South Korean K-pop group, for supporting the mask-wearing public health practice.

K-pop fans retweeted WHO’s message, making it the most shared mask-wearing tweet. When health officials and agencies leveraged entertainment groups like “#BTS” into their public health messages on COVID-19, this generated 111 times more virality or retweets, according to a new Dartmouth-led study. Read more from Dartmouth here.