The COVID-19 Crisis Response Strategy and Public Opinion: the Complexities Involved in Acquiring Public Support for the Sticky Crisis

Abstract

The Indonesian government has been under intense scrutiny as the public expects them to handle the COVID-19 crisis competently and in line with their expectations. The research used quantitative content analysis of 30 organizational status posts and 578 public comments on the Ministry of Health's Instagram account. The analysis, conducted using descriptive analysis and a chi-square test, indicates that the most widely used organizational crisis response strategies were: justification, reminder, compensation, and ingratiation. Findings also showed that the public actively used social media to evaluate the attribution of organizational crisis responsibility, perceiving the government as responsible for the crisis response. This research contributes to the study of crisis communication by providing insights into the necessity for organizations, particularly those responsible for crisis management, to conduct crisis communication that clearly shows corrective action that is aligned, responsive, and adaptive to public expectations, leveraging media channels commonly used by the public for information dissemination.

Keywords:crisis responsepublic opinionsituational crisis communication theoryattribution of responsibility