Citizen journalism practices during COVID-19 in spotlight: influence of user-generated contents about economic policies in perceiving government performance

Abstract

Citizen journalism practices through social networking sites are increasingly becoming an imperative source of public opinion formation. Given the increase in the volume of information sharing on social media during COVID-19, this study aims to grasp the largely unknown interaction of the individual’s trust in citizen journalism practices and public perception formulation. Drawing on this idea, the study has twofold objectives: first, to examine the influence of user-generated information about economic policies of government during COVID-19 as the antecedent of public perception about government performance and second, to identify the moderating role of trust in citizen journalism practices during COVID-19 through social networking sites. The study used a survey method and a sample of 464 adults were collected through an online administrated questionnaire. The findings specify that user-generated content that is pro-government economic policies during COVID-19 positively influenced the perception of government performance. On the other hand, user-generated information that criticized government economic policies had a negative influence on public perception. This study seeks to intensify the understudied phenomenon of how nature and source of the information could interact to influence one’s information processing during a crisis such as pandemic COVID-19. Furthermore, only a little research has been conducted in this area focusing on two mechanisms, namely; citizen journalism and trust in social media user-generated information about prevailing economic insecurities during crisis provided through citizen journalism.