The picture shows a middle-aged man, wearing glasses and a tie with his suit, could be a mayor or secretary of state.

In any case, he is more likely to convince Arabic-speaking migrants in Germany to deal with the corona vaccination than photos of a family, a doctor or an imam.

This is the result of a study by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the University of Potsdam, which will be presented this Friday.

Researchers looked at how the government is most likely to get people with a migrant background in Germany to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in Politics.

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In order to find out how the vaccination campaign in social networks can be more effective, especially among migrants, the scientists presented them with various Facebook ads in November and December that called for vaccination and at the end of which there was a link to an appointment booking portal led.

A total of around one million Facebook users took part in the study, with the researchers assuming that a user belonged to a migrant milieu based on the language set on Facebook.

A distinction was made between user groups using the network in German, Arabic, Turkish and Russian.

A total of just over 17,000 users clicked on the link to register for an appointment, i.e. around 1.7 percent of the participants.

In view of the vaccination rate of around 68 percent at the time, the authors of the study - Jasper Tjaden, Professor for Applied Social Research in Potsdam, and Esther Haarmann from the Center for the Evaluation of Global Migration Data at the IOM - consider the value to be "considerable", as they say in the study to write.

After all, those who have been vaccinated are no longer interested in the offer.

However, it was not clear to the authors whether the interested parties actually had themselves vaccinated.

For the migrants, on the other hand, who, according to a study recently presented by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), are vaccinated against corona much less frequently than people without a migration history, addressing them in social networks apparently plays an important role.

Facebook users who speak Arabic clicked on the link in the ad three and a half percent of the time, and thus significantly more often, when the vaccination request was illustrated with a picture of a politician or civil servant.

On the other hand, if the ad used the authority of a family that needs to be protected, the rate dropped to just over two percent.

Only two percent were ads showing a doctor or a religious leader – in this case an imam.

However, German ties are far from being the same for all migrant groups.

Turkish-speaking users were most open to vaccination appointments when an imam graced the ad – only then did the click rate in the study climb to values ​​over two percent.

On the other hand, people who were assumed to be immigrant because they use Facebook in Russian were found to be particularly helpful, albeit at a lower level than the Arabic-speaking users.

For comparison: People who use the network in German were most likely to click on the link when a doctor pointed out the importance of vaccination - but even then the two percent mark could not be reached.

However, it is questionable whether the specific migration background can be inferred from the language set on Facebook in any case.

The language alone says nothing about religious affiliation.

Willingness increases with advertisements in the mother tongue

Even more than a person's authority, language makes a difference.

If the ad is translated from German into the respective mother tongue, the willingness to deal with the topic increases significantly - the click rates were sometimes more than twice as high as if the ad was played in German.

CTR increased by 133 percent for Arabic speakers, 67 percent for Russian speakers, and 18 percent for Turkish speakers.

According to the authors, the vaccination rates in the milieus examined could be increased by up to 14 percentage points in this way.

They conclude that the effect of language may explain the observed immunization gap between the general population and migrant groups.

The RKI recently empirically confirmed that people with a migration background in Germany are less likely to be vaccinated against corona than the average population.

While 92 percent of those surveyed without a migration background stated that they had been vaccinated against corona at least once, only 84 percent of people with a migration background did.

However, because the willingness to vaccinate among the migrants surveyed was higher at the same time, the report attributes the differences in vaccination rates to language, among other things.

"Low knowledge of German can represent a key barrier to accessing information and healthcare services," the study said.

“The poorer the assessment of German language skills, the more likely it is that people are not vaccinated.” The scientists from Potsdam and the United Nations build on this finding.

"It is important to tailor campaigns to specific migrant groups and demographics," write Tjaden and Haarmann.

"The sooner official information reaches the target audience, the less room there is for doubt."