Public communication in the time of pandemic: Lessons from Indonesia

This study aims to explain the public communication processes used by local leaders in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. As elsewhere, the pandemic exposed the Indonesian government's public communication crises, especially at the early stages of the outbreak. Public communication has a vital role in increasing public awareness of contemporary issues. In Indonesia, public communication is the responsibility of the central and local governments. The success or failure of policies rely on the effectiveness of public communication endeavours undertaken. Using qualitative content analysis, this study investigates and compares the social media content produced by several regional leaders in Indonesia in the pandemic’s early months. This approach makes it possible to evaluate local governments’ public communication during the pandemic and provide essential lessons for the future. Research involved the following stages: first, it explored and explicated the relevant literature on rhetoric and public communication; second, it elucidated Aristotle’s three pillars of persuasion, which were used as units of study; third, qualitative content analysis was applied to the social media content produced by Indonesia’s regional leaders. The findings are twofold: first, referring to Aristotle’s three pillars of persuasion (ethos, logos, pathos), regional leaders use a more personal and emotional approach to convey their COVID-19 policies rather than a data-based one. Second, regional leaders’ approaches are influenced by their preferred social media for communicating with the public; different persuasive elements are used on different social media, and these influence the effectiveness of local governments’ public communication. © SEARCH Journal 2021.