Assessing Governments’ Emergency Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak Using a Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Abstract

One of the effective ways of preventing the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak is dependent on non-pharmaceutical interventions due to the absence of a vaccine against the virus. This study aims to assess organizational emergency responses to COVID-19 using a social network analysis (SNA) method via Gephi. The data were obtained from a weekly Indonesian magazine, TEMPO, which reported on the Indonesian government’s response to COVID-19 from early March to early April 2020. One hundred and fifty actors represent the nodes and 180 connections denoted as edges are explored and analyzed using the SNA tool. The study found that the emergency response to the pandemic consisted of less solid, non-traditional structural interactions, and that the head of the task force played a lesser role in the response to this outbreak. The content analysis revealed that the team members’ issues of concern included coordination, hoaxes and fake issues, instruction/consultation, social distancing, and the lack of testing equipment. The results of the study are expected to contribute to the literature on research on emergency responses to pandemics. The findings also contribute to the development of the design of organizational emergency policies in the contexts of large-scale pandemics.