It’s not enough just to make decisions. Researcher shows why states must be able to explain their actions
It is not enough to have a good idea or a well-prepared policy. States must also be able to explain why and how their decisions are made, emphasizes Dr. Hana Moravcová from the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University. Her research focuses on strategic communication of public institutions and how digital platforms influence our everyday lives. In the future, she wants to contribute to ensuring that communication in public administration is not just a supplement, but a natural part of policymaking. She sees the way forward, among other things, in closer cooperation between experts across disciplines.
In her latest study, Does Saying It Out Loud Matter? Strategic Communication Transparency as a Marker of Developed Democracies, she examines whether states openly explain how they communicate their decisions, and whether such openness is related to citizen trust and the quality of governance. In the research, she analyzed 28 countries, including the Czech Republic. She used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on citizen trust in government, which she then combined with expert assessments of the quality of governance, the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI). The aim was to find out whether there are differences between countries that openly explain how public sector communication works and those that do not.
“I was hoping to find direct evidence that more transparent communication leads to higher trust. However, this was not confirmed with the data we had available. However, the data showed us another important connection,” says Moravcová. “In countries where experts assessed government communication as more coherent and better coordinated, citizens had a significantly stronger feeling that their opinions were heard and that they could participate in public life,” she adds.
Countries that openly describe their approach to strategic communication also perform better in a number of other indicators. They are often countries with higher GDP or better-rated social policies. “Quality governance and good strategic communication towards citizens go hand in hand,” summarizes Moravcová. In the study, these were countries such as Great Britain, Australia and the Nordic countries. The Czech Republic, on the other hand, was in the group of countries that the expert panel rated less favorably and that had a lower level of citizen trust in the government. Moreover, the countries in this group were mostly silent about strategic communication in the public sector.
At the time of data collection, there was no publicly available document in the Czech Republic that would systematically explain how the state approaches strategic communication. However, this does not mean that there is a lack of effort to communicate in the state administration. “There are people with good will who want to communicate in accordance with the requirement for participation in the preparation of laws. However, the involvement of strategic communication in participation often occurs only on the initiative of individuals. Such people would be happy to communicate in a coordinated manner through their institution, but the process itself does not always allow them to do so,” she says.
She also sees one of the problems in the fact that communication is still not perceived as a self-evident part of public policy-making. However, the solution, she says, is not to convince politicians and civil servants that communication is important. A more open approach requires a change in the entire culture of public administration. “This is not a question of one person coming in and explaining to everyone how important strategic communication is. It is something that must be part of the entire public sector. At the same time, it requires not being afraid to communicate individual policies, because as soon as you try to do so, you may also hear that the policy may not be good. And it is precisely this fear of negative reactions or lack of time that is among the main reasons why public policy communication is often sidelined,” she emphasizes.
At the same time, according to her, strategic communication does not have to mean extensive conceptual documents. After all, conceptually, participation has long had a firm place in the public sphere – its implementation without strategic communication is, however, limited. “It is primarily about the state being able to clearly describe how it will involve the public in the preparation of policies, what data it uses or how it will collect feedback. In other words: citizens should be able to understand not only the decision itself, but also the process that led to it,” she states.
This is precisely where the core of strategic communication lies – it should not stand next to policy making, but be a natural part of it from the first proposal to the evaluation of the results. “The person preparing the policy itself should focus on its content. But in addition to him, they need a partner who can help explain complex information, choose appropriate communication channels and prepare for situations where misunderstandings may occur. This is precisely why the professionalization of communication is so important,” she adds.
A new opportunity for academia
The theme of trust and informed decision-making does not only appear in her research in relation to the state. She also asks similar questions when examining digital platforms. In her popularizing book Digitální marketing v nové éře regulace (Digital Marketing in the New Era of Regulation), she focused on how technology companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok have come to occupy an exceptionally powerful position. “At the beginning, as ordinary users, we did not realize that these services would cause someone to make a very profitable business out of our data and all other users’ data and be able to monetize it in an unprecedented way,” she explains.
She therefore sees the new European regulation as a necessary step. According to her, it is not only about protecting privacy or fighting disinformation, but also about responding to a situation where the digital market does not function as a normal competitive environment. “This is not a standard competitive situation. There is no longer any room for the idea of a free market here,” she says. “We cannot think that each member state will make its own rules and it will work. Here, a strong European player makes a lot of sense as a counterweight to global platforms,” she adds.
According to her, the new rules also provide an opportunity for the academic sphere to get involved. Thanks to the creation of so-called “vetted researchers”, researchers are gaining greater opportunities to analyze the impacts of digital platforms on society. “Where we can somehow defend ourselves and academia can help, it is through the institute of these so-called vetted researchers. This is a category of researcher who has much closer access to how algorithms work and what actually happens inside the platforms,” says Moravcová.
The new rules should thus enable more detailed research into how platforms recommend content, how their algorithms work or what factors influence the spread of information in the online environment. According to her, this opens up the possibility of better understanding the environment which significantly influences public debate, politics and everyday life. “We have moved on from the time when we just created accounts on those platforms and only watched what would happen. Today we at least have a chance to really examine some processes and understand them better,” she adds.
In the field of digital platform research, she and her colleague Markéta Klásková, also from the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, are also studying how people react to cookie bars, how they think about their privacy on the Internet, and whether they believe that regulation can protect them. The first results indicate interesting differences between generations. “In the Czech Republic, we found that older groups are more concerned about their privacy on the Internet. They are more cautious and more aware that companies collect data about them,” says Moravcová. At the same time, she was surprised that the Czechs do not do badly in international comparison. According to available data, they are relatively sensitive to issues of digital privacy and pay more attention to cookie settings than residents of some other European countries.
Two research paths, one common theme
In both directions of her research – the communication of public institutions and the functioning of digital platforms – she tries to understand how people obtain information, whether they trust it and how they make decisions based on it. In the future, she would especially like to contribute to states and public organizations explaining their decisions better and removing obstacles that prevent communication from being a natural part of policymaking. “I try to figure out which recommendations actually make sense and how some processes could be improved. And if it doesn’t work, I’m interested in why it doesn’t work,” she explains.
According to her, however, issues of trust, communication or the functioning of public institutions can no longer be addressed from the perspective of just one discipline. That is why she sees a great opportunity for cooperation between experts from different fields. “I think there is room here for scientists from across communication sciences, political science, sociology, or economics to come together and find out what each of them can bring to make the process of creating public policies work better,” concludes Dr. Moravcová.
