Applying WebQual 4.0 to measure the quality of government websites as a function of agenda building-information subsidies for journalists during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative study between Malaysia and Indonesia

This research aims to evaluate the quality of Indonesian and Malaysian government websites as a communication channel for the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The evaluation involved three dimensions of WebQual 4.0, an evaluation standard for website quality because it contains the principles of mass communication and dialogic face-to-face communication. Government websites can serve as the main source of information for journalists in producing news. If a substantial amount of mass media news is sourced from government websites, then the government public relations practitioner functions as a provider of information subsidies to build a media agenda. A total of 37 Indonesian and 36 Malaysian journalists filled out the study’s online questionnaire. Findings reveal that the interactive quality of both government websites is still low, but aspects of technology or usability and information quality are at a satisfactory level. Further, the Malaysian government website functions better as a provider of agenda-building information subsidies because Malaysian journalists tend to disseminate more information from these websites in the form of news than Indonesian journalists. This is related to the interactive aspect in which the Malaysian government websites are considered by Malaysian journalists to be more interactive.