What do garden gnomes, tanks and Uganda have to do with Austrian history? You can find the answer to that and much more on the brand-new TikTok-channel by FH JOANNEUM students, which is called “Geschichte Oida!”
In the fifth semester, the “Journalism and Public Relations (PR)” students at FH JOANNEUM are tasked with developing their own media-project. This takes place as a practical exercise under the guidance of digital journalist Stefan Apfl. The creative process is not regulated by any guidelines, the students can let their creativity run free. The only condition is that the result must be put online. That was the beginning of “Geschichte Oida!”
Austrian History on TikTok
The six students - Nikolai Hartlieb, Nico Lang, Lukas Lorber, Marie Miedl-Rissner, Jonas Rettenegger and Florian Schantl - formed a group and decided to create a TikTok- and Instagram-Account. According to Nico Lang, the task was a challenge because neither of them had any previous experience with TikTok.
It was important for them to incorporate their own interests into the project. So they decided to devote themselves to Austrian history - a topic not many accounts had dealt with yet.
Most of their time was invested into research in order to get enough exciting material, says Nico Lang. The shoot on the other hand went by very fast - within two days they had produced all videos for a month.
Six-digit View Numbers
So far the group has been very satisfied with their project. It surpassed their expectations both in terms of range and number of followers and sparked an interest in anecdotes from Austrian history in a remarkably young target group. Especially their video about punishments for aristocracy drew a lot of attention, with more than 200.000 views. Their success proves them right, oida.
Simon Auernig, Tobias Graf, Mathias Huber are students of JPR21