Whom to Trust in Crises? The Influence of Communicator Characteristics in Governmental Crisis Communication

Public sentiment toward government communicators plays a critical role during crises, influencing societal resilience and potentially contributing to broader trust in government. Such sentiment is shaped not only by what is said, but also by who says it. While existing literature on political crisis communication has largely focused on the content of governmental messages, it has overlooked the importance of the messenger. This study addresses that gap by shifting attention from what is communicated to who is communicating. This research explores how the personal characteristics of government communicators relate to public sentiment toward them during crises. To do so, this study matches data on communicators present at government-held press conferences with social media discourse, examining how these communicators are referenced online. Social media platforms serve as vital spaces where citizens communicate about their government’s crisis response and thus play an important role in building or undermining public responses. Given their role in shaping public perceptions of government performance, these digital platforms offer an ideal setting to observe sentiment toward communicators during crises. The study analyzes 744,000 posts on Twitter (now X) from six European countries during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic using advanced transformer-based classification models. Expressions of positive sentiment are identified through sentiment analysis, capturing affective reactions in user-generated content. The findings indicate that political actors are generally associated with less positive sentiment than experts, who tend to elicit more positive responses. Gender also emerges as a significant factor: During peak crisis periods, women communicators are more likely to be referenced positively on social media. This pattern aligns with prior research on a potential “trust advantage” for women in crisis communication, which has been linked to relational communication traits that are particularly valued in high-stress contexts.