Saudi social media users’ reliance on the speech of the Ministry of Health Media Spokesperson during the Corona (Covid-19) virus crisis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Electronic Publishing, College of Media and Communication - Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, College of Arts, King Saud University, Riyadh

Abstract

This study examines the extent to which social media users in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rely on the speech of the Ministry of Health Media Spokesperson during the Corona (Covid-19) virus crisis. The aim of the study is to identify the extent and motives of this dependency, and to verify its cognitive, emotional and behavioral effects.
This study is significant because there is an urgent need to evaluate the role that a media spokesperson in government agencies plays, mainly in crises facing society. As such, this study acquires its significance due to scarcity of investigative research on this topic, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in particular.
The two researchers utilized the descriptive survey approach to generate scientific results that reveal the extent to which social networks users in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia depend on the speech of the Ministry of Health Media Spokesperson during the Corona (Covid-19)virus crisis. The researchers adopted the questionnaire as a main research tool to collect the related data from the sample of the study, which amounted to 3234 respondents.
The outcome of the study in its entirety indicated the extent to which Saudi social network users relied on the speech of the Ministry of Health Media Spokesperson during the Corona (Covid-19) virus crisis. Most prominently, the study showed that more than three-quarters of the respondents follow the Media Spokesperson's speech via social media, and Twitter ranked first as the most reliable social network for the Saudi public to follow the Ministry of Health Media Spokesperson's speech.
The findings of the study also showed that ‘cognitive effects’ on Saudi social media users came first as a result of their reliance on the Ministry of Health Media Spokesperson’s speech. Such a finding indicated the positivity of the ‘cognitive effects’ in general, followed by the ‘behavioral effects’, and then the ‘emotional effects’. Moreover, there is a clear indication that the majority of the study sample were apprehensive due to the lack of health awareness in the society, and the inability to counter this pandemic

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