Evaluation of twitter messages of the Ministry of Health in terms of building trust during the COVID-19 pandemic

Trust is a frequently observed value and phenomenon in daily life. The pandemic caused by the new coronavirus has created a global atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty. Countries have implemented strict and restrictive public sanitation. Trust in health systems motivates people to accept and collaborate with public health interventions. Trust in health systems motivates people to accept and collaborate with community health interventions. Therefore, trust has become a necessity. The main purpose of this thesis is to determine the trust building and development of citizens through communication from institution to citizen via Twitter while evaluating the Covid-19 epidemic of the Ministry of Health. Two different quantitative research methods have been used in the study. Firstly, 1,142 tweets from the official Twitter account of the Ministry of Health between 01 September and 30 April have been included in the sample of this study, in which content analysis method, one of the quantitative research methods, has been used. Answers were sought to the questions "how" and "for what purpose" the Ministry used its Twitter account during the Covid-19 epidemic. According to the results of the research, it was noticed that the Ministry of Health frequently preferred the public information model that allows simplex communication between these dates. The tweets shared within this scope mostly consist of tweets containing information, news contents, press releases and research data. Secondly, the sample of the study, in which a face-to-face questionnaire, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used, consists of Twitter users residing in Bolu and aged 18 and over. A total of 435 people participated in the field research. With the data analyzed through statistical methods, the experiental relationships between the tweets by the Ministry of Health on Twitter while evaluating the Covid-19 epidemic and the trust process were analyzed. According to the results of this research, it was revealed that the Ministry of Health's sharing of information via Twitter affects the reliability of the messages and the reliability of the institution-citizens, and the perception of reliability of the citizens depends on their trust in an institution. Citizens' trust in Twitter positively affected the increase in this trust in the Ministry of Health.