Crisis Communication 4.0: Evaluating the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Public Trust Management

Abstract

The 4th era of crisis communication is here, and organisations have started building automation through artificial intelligence (AI) for drafting crisis messages. Crisis Communication 4.0 is the point where organisations are able to integrate digital methodologies, artificial intelligence, and real-time data analytics for monitoring and communication with stakeholders in crisis communication. This study investigates the variables of trust for AI and human crisis messages in a controlled experiment. A between-participant design was used to show 1,200 Indonesian university students a fictitious data breach scenario and assign them to view either an AI-generated statement or a human-generated statement. Trust was defined in the study as a derived perceptual construct made of the components: consistency, timeliness, sincerity, and credibility. Quantitative data was collected through independent t-tests and multiple regression analyses, which found that AI crisis messages were perceived as more timely and consistent, while human messages were perceived as more sincere and credible. Regression analyses indicate that sincerity has the highest effect on overall trust (β = 0.36). These findings challenge deterministic perspectives that place AI communication and human communication on opposing ends and instead suggest a synergistic model of communication with AI enhancing operational efficiency and humans providing the ethical and emotional recalibrations. This study reframes the trust attributes as perceptually and socially constructed instead of the trust attributes as based on the communication itself, providing a theoretical starting point to capture the complexities of ethically explainable AI in crisis management.