Public Trust Toward Government Online Crisis Communication: A Malaysian Youth Perspective

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_35How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Government online crisis communication; Millennials; Public trust; Social media; Youth

Abstract

Using the backdrop of economic crisis following COVID-19 pandemic, this study measures Malaysian youth perception toward trust and the characteristics of social media used in government online crisis communication. Youth, just like other group of citizens, is directly and indirectly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the implications faced by youth are severe economic consequences such as suffering extreme financial hardship and increased unemployment rate which could lead to the decline in trust toward their government. This study is guided by the network crisis communication theory to explain the role of social media characteristic as the medium to disseminate government crisis messages and subsequently restore the trust among youth. This study employs a cross sectional, quantitative approach using survey for data collection. Through two-stage sampling technique, this study selected public university students representing the Malaysian youth as the sample. A total of 373 respondents take part in the survey which was conveniently selected through sharing of the google form link to selected public universities in Malaysia. Three hypotheses were tested using Pearson correlation and were all supported. The implication of the study indicates that government should consider including trust and the social media characteristics in planning their crisis communication plans as well as in formulating policy regarding their online crisis communication.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jamilah Jamal
AU  - Norhafezah Yusof
AU  - Suhaini Muda
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/08/31
TI  - Public Trust Toward Government Online Crisis Communication: A Malaysian Youth Perspective
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication and Media 2022 (i-COME 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 403
EP  - 415
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_35
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_35
ID  - Jamal2023
ER  -