Being transparent or spinning the message? An experiment into the effects of varying message content on trust in government

Being transparent or spinning the message? An experiment into the effects of varying message content on trust in government
By Stephen Grimmelikhuijsen

Purpose and Audience

Grimmelikhuijsen examines policy messages on government websites to determine their ability to be transparent and provide information to the public. To do this, he explores whether balanced messages, messages containing dissenting information, or messages spun to in favor of the government organization reach the intended audience.

The target audiences for this article are technical communication writers looking for information to better reach their audiences in a government environment; public policy makers; government public affairs practitioners; and technical communications students looking to enhance their knowledge in government communications.

Organization

The organization of Grimmelikhuijsen’s article begins with an introduction and literature review into transparency and its basis for trust within an organization, especially a government organization. “Besides being of value itself, transparency is regarded to be a promising instrument to increase citizen trust in government” (35).

Grimmelikhuijsen adds that websites serve as an important communication tool is delivering transparency pro-actively, but cautions that spinning a message to present a more favorable message can become too easy on an organization’s website.

After Grimmelikhuijsen introduced the topic, he then begins a brief introduction on government transparency. Citing President Barack Obama, Grimmelikhuijsen explores Obama’s push for a transparency within government via Obama’s “Open Government Directive” (37).

The fundamental question Grimmelikhuijsen examines in his article is “What is the effect of varying spin of message content on citizen trust in a government organization?” To do this, Grimmelikhuijsen created an experiment where he created three separate groups: one group received a message with a two-sided approach; one group received a message with a slightly positive message; and the last group received a message with a highly positive message.

Level of Detail
Grimmelikhuijsen dedicates a lot of space to explaining what transparency is and he discusses the pros and cons of it. He defines transparency as “the availability of information be an organization or actor allowing external actors to monitor the internal workings or performance of that organization” (38).

Grimmelikhuijsen developed three hypotheses for this article:

·         H1: A higher degree of message balance is expected to negatively affect perceived competence.

·         H2: A higher degree of message balance is expected to positively affect perceived benevolence.

·         H3: A higher degree of message balance is expected to positively affect perceived honesty.

Grimmelikhuijsen tested the three hypotheses by doing a one-way multivariate analysis of covariance. In his findings, he said there were no differences regarding perceived benevolence and honesty. Thus, H2 and H3 were not substantiated. I am not familiar with this type of statistical analysis but after reviewing his graphs and his summary, I would be suspect of his evidence because I didn’t see him account for his interpretations of the evidence nor did he account for the possibility that the test subjects already had an opinion on the topic or agency.

The only outcome that this research provided was a minimal significance for a citizen to have a negative effect on policy transparency or perceived trustworthiness. Grimmelikhuijsen concluded that “Based on these results remain it remains questionable whether transparency will indeed lead to more trust in  government” (46).

Citation and References
Grimmelikhuijsen cites several sources that he used for both background and quoted material within the article. He does a good job of combining several different disciplines and presenting a fair, balanced and ethical presentation. While the outcome does not suggest that transparency within government leads to trust, it does prove useful in teaching technical writers to consider what is being said on a government website.