Abstract
A wealth of research emphasizes the importance of citizens’ trust in public institutions. Low social capital has been proven as a substantial factor in decreasing trust in government. As a means of increasing social capital, social media is used by governments to gain citizens’ trust. It is not sufficient though to create accounts on these platforms, and there should be a well-set communication strategy and a systematic mechanism to measure its success. Few studies were conducted to measure government trust in social media considering various trust dimensions. Therefore, an evaluation of the extent of trust in the government on Facebook accounts was undertaken in 2018. In that study, a framework was developed to measure trust comprising six main items: Responsiveness, Accessibility, Transparency, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Participation. The framework was tested on a sample of the Facebook accounts of three Egyptian ministries (chosen based on their direct relation to the country’s economy). After going through two major incidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian-Ukraine war, it became pivotal to reassess trust in the government using the same framework after applying a few adjustments and considering the aspect of government trustworthiness. A comparison between both studies is discussed drawing concluded insights.
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Azab, N., ElSherif, M. (2023). Measuring Trust in Government Amid COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine War. In: Yang, XS., Sherratt, R.S., Dey, N., Joshi, A. (eds) Proceedings of Eighth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. ICICT 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 693. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3243-6_56
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