Perception towards governmental communication during COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary and Singapore

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Effective government communication is crucial in times of crisis and pandemics. Besides the communication itself, even more, essential is people’s perception of it and people’s readiness to comply with the newly created rules and regulations introduced by their government. Why do some countries comply with the COVID-19 regulations and look up to their government actions while others don’t? Does it have anything to do with how people see their government and the type of culture the country belongs to? These questions prompted my interest to study the perception towards governmental communication in cultures that differ by the level of strictness when it comes to their norms and ambiguate behaviour. The objective of my thesis is to establish the difference between people’s perception towards state communication during COVID-19 pandemic in tight and loose cultures. As the groundwork of this study, Gelfand’s (2011) classification of loose and tight cultures was taken. Her empirical studies related to looseness and tightness spectrum served as the base for this thesis. To achieve the research objectives, this thesis adopted quantitative method with the focus placed on a cross-sectional questionnaire with multiple-choice, rating scale and open-ended questions answered by representatives of two different cultures and residents of two selected countries: Hungary and Singapore. To facilitate data analysis, the JASP program was used for the statistical part of the analysis. According to the final conclusions of the thesis, cultural belonging is crucial in shaping the perception of state communication. Progress has been made in understanding how cultural factor influence people’s obeyance and perception of their government’s communication, but many further important research questions remain unanswered. Future research could include more countries and a wider audience, make a focus on local residents in order to reach more precise data when it comes to their understanding of local regulations and communication specifics. Research topics suggested for further development may include: how can loose cultures improve their crisis communication and how shall the best practices be passed to loose cultures when the world is facing another pandemic in the future?