Affiliations: [a] Department of Public Administration, College of Public Policy, The University of Texas San Antonio, TX, USA | [b] School of Computing and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Wollongong, Australia | [c] Batam Polytechnic, Indonesia
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Christopher G. Reddick, Department of Public Administration, College of Public Policy, The University of Texas San Antonio, TX, USA. E-mail:chris.reddick@utsa.edu
Abstract: This paper explores antecedents of the public's perception of government
crisis communication transparency during the 2014 AirAsia QZ8501 crash,
which was characterized by hyper-unknown and hyper-uncertainty. A model of
government crisis communication transparency was developed to identify known
antecedents. The authors collected and analyzed special issue news reports
on the 2014 AirAsia QZ8501 crash from the detik.com website. There were 328
articles citing government as the information source, which the authors used
to construct a framework to guide their media content analysis of these
articles. Our findings strongly indicate that openness of the search and
rescue process is the most salient antecedent to the media's positive
perceptions of government transparency in crisis communication on ongoing
search and rescue operations. Other antecedents of importance are management
and structure, information quality, government leadership, and ICT use. A
revised model of government transparency in crisis communication is
constructed which underscores the importance of implementing open government
policy to enhance transparent government crisis communication. The research
contribution of this paper is this revised model of government transparency
that considers the unique context of crisis communication, something the
literature has not fully explored.
Keywords: Government transparency, crisis communication, open process, management and structure, information quality, government leadership, AirAsia QZ8501 crash
