The outbreak of the covid-19 epidemic at the beginning of 2020 put public health institutions' readiness and trust in them to the test. During such emergency situations, both trust and crisis communication become far more significant, and the level of trust in the entity communicating preventive measures, such as National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ), is especially important. Since the communication approach as an institution's competence is one of the most important factors in building trust, the purpose of this master's thesis is to identify the key approaches and elements of crisis communication of the NIJZ with young adults during the epidemic and to study how they experience them and how these approaches strengthen or weaken their trust in NIJZ. I researched the attitudes, perspectives, and opinions of young adults, particularly post-graduate students of social sciences, on the NIJZ's crisis communication and its impact on their trust in this institution by conducting a homogeneous focus group. I used thematic analysis to analyze the data and concluded that a military approach to crisis communication used by NIJZ's representatives weakened young adults' trust in the institution, whereas a rational approach could potentially improve it. The qualitative findings of this master's thesis provide an opportunity to deepen understanding of the quantitative results of research on trust in public health institutions and can serve as a foundation for developing communication guidelines for more effective trust building through communication to specific segments of the population, such as young adults.
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