How Scandinavian political leaders appealed to cognitive or affective-based trust during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Trust is important if people are to be willing to follow leaders during a crisis. This study examines how the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden and Denmark endeavoured to appeal to either cognitive-based or affective-based trust during the first eight months of the Covid-19 pandemic. These two types of trust stem from management studies but have some similarities with concepts introduced in political linguistics about competence face, which appeals to the mind (logos), versus affective face, which appeals to the heart (pathos). This study attempts to operationalise these frameworks by conducting a discourse analysis of sixteen of the prime ministers’ important political speeches during the pandemic, and to identify how they thematically and linguistically appeal to different types of trust. Although there are some differences between the three prime ministers, the similarities are more noticeable, which might reflect the social, cultural and institutional similarity between the three Scandinavian countries. The prime ministers appeal to both competence and affective-based trust. However, compared to some other studies of political crisis communication during the pandemic, these prime ministers kept themselves in the background, and their affective faces were not displayed through informal language or personal anecdotes but by appealing to collective values and shared responsibility.