Egyptian public dependency on social media during power outage crisis and its relationship to their evaluation of efficiency of government communication in managing crisis

The study sought to identify the extent to which the Egyptian public depend on social media to obtain information about the power outage crisis and to identify the most important cognitive, emotional and behavioral effects resulting from this dependency, in addition to identifying the extent to which dependency on social media affects their assessment of the efficiency of government communication in managing the crisis. The study relied on the theory of situational crisis communications and the dependency model of mass communication through an electronic survey on available sample of 315 individuals from Egyptian public. The study concluded that social media was the most used sources of information about the power outage crisis for most of the respondents. However, they depended on it to a moderate extent as a primary source for obtaining information about electricity crisis and they trusted it to a moderate extent. Official government pages of ministries came at the forefront of pages respondents used to obtain information about electricity crisis, accounting for nearly half of the sample, followed by news sites, then family and friends. The most common topics of government messages that respondents were exposed to via social media sites were declaring power outages timing in different areas, followed by the confirmation that the crisis was caused by the increase in electrical loads in summer due to the unprecedented rise in temperatures. The most important reasons for electricity crisis from respondents’ point of view were lack of prior planning for crises in the first place, followed by the fact that the economic crisis led to a shortage of the financial resources needed to import fuel, then the lack of coordination between the relevant ministries. The results of the study showed that respondents had a medium degree of satisfaction with the decisions and measures taken by the government during the electricity crisis. In general, the public's overall evaluation of the efficiency of Egyptian government's communications in managing the crisis was neutral in first place, followed by negative evaluation in second place, and finally positive evaluation. The respondents saw that the government's communication response was slow to inform the public of what had happened. They agreed to some extent that some facts about the crisis were not mentioned. However, the respondents saw that the Prime Minister's speaking to the public through press conferences expressed respect for the citizens and clarified the facts to them, and that the Prime Minister's official apology in which he confirmed his feeling for the citizens' suffering reduced their feelings of anger.