The article entitled “Lockdowns, lethality, and laissez-faire politics. Public discourses on political authorities in high-trust countries during the COVID-19 pandemic” is published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
The study looks at population response to government containment strategies during initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in four high-trust Northern European countries–Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden–with special emphasis on expressions of governmental trust. It analyzes Twitter data and employs sentiment analysis and topic modeling analysis, and compares across time and countries. Findings show that, in line with existing theory, assertive crisis responses and proactive communication were generally well-received, whereas tentative crisis responses or indications by the authorities that the crisis was manageable were generally met with suspicion. In addition, while government support was high in all countries during the height of the crisis, messages critical of the government as well as conspiracy theories were nevertheless widely circulated.
The article was originally written as a RMA Thesis in the Research Master Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts, supervised by Marc Verboord. Sara Perlstein is currently PhD student at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in the research groups Crisis Governance and Physical Violence and Public Order at Leiden University.
Read the full article on the website of PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253175
- Professor