Experts increasingly find themselves in a situation where they must publicly earn their own credibility (Hilgartner, 2000 Jasanoff and Simmett, 2017 Turnhout et al., 2019). On the contrary, persistent debates rooted in what experts consider solid science, such as climate change or vaccinations, have been showing for some time now that the authority of experts is not a matter of simple, let alone, unconditional acceptance ( Hajer, 2009 Oreskes and Conway, 2010). However, this trust in expert advice could by no means be assumed. This collaboration depended upon citizens’ trust in expert advice and their judgment of the situation. From the outset the Dutch approach was aimed at making citizens collaborate. We argue that it is not so much the facts themselves that are at stake here but hidden moralities, which include the government’s alleged complacency while asking citizens to blindly trust, its unpredictable behavior in the light of the promised straight line between scientific evidence and policy making, and its motivated behavior while claiming that the facts speak for themselves.Įffective management of the COVID-19 crisis required strong and lasting collaboration between policy makers, scientific experts and citizens. Framing on Twitter challenged the omnipotence of the experts advising the government in various ways, namely, by referring to dissenting opinions of other experts, by questioning the underlying motives of experts’ advice or by pointing out that the policies were clearly contrary to everyday experience. The results show that the technocratic framing of expertise remained stable during the sampling period, regarding the undisputed status of expertise as the clear-cut basis for decision-making in uncertain times. 26 press conferences of the Dutch Prime Minister were analyzed and a search for the most popular posts on Twitter referring to the press conference(s) was carried out covering the period between March 6th and May 29th, 2020. We selected two interrelated “stages”: the official press conferences, fully controlled by the government, and the responses on Twitter, as focal channel for critique from the general public, but also from opposition parties and (alleged) experts. Our analysis examines the dramaturgy of expertise during this period. In this article we analyze the performance of the Dutch government that, early on, labeled its approach to COVID-19 as an “intelligent lockdown”. In justifying their decisions, politicians internationally reverted back to a direct staging of experts to legitimize their proposals for what internationally became known as the “lockdown”. Quite suddenly, politicians had to make drastic decisions to guarantee public health, affecting basic civil liberties. The corona crisis of 2020 took many by surprise. 3Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.2Urban Futures Studio, Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.1Department of Language, Literature and Communication, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Robert Prettner 1* Hedwig te Molder 1 Maarten A.

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