As strategic asset – determinant of sustained competitiveness – corporate/firm reputation has a very distinctive feature that sets it apart: although reflection of (better, worse or not at all performed) reputation management at a company’s level, it is rather a “representation” / “perception” – built on a business’s previous behaviors, but more precisely on the ways its different stakeholders have interacted (acknowledged, internalized, resonated) with them – in a (sometimes unconscious) process highly mediated and moderated by the media. Thus, the current study aims to explore the interplays between corporate/firm reputation and media as they are reflected in the scientific literature – through a bibliometric analysis of the WoS Core Collection database records (between 1992 and 2019), using the VOSviewer tool. With its emphasis on corporate/firm reputation and media, the paper shapes the broad theoretical backgrounds in anticipation of future research and empirical results to be revealed on a much more focused and applied/practical area, namely the reputation of the media in Romania.

Part of a bigger research project conducted by Media Reputation Lab (Media REP Lab) on the reputation of media in Europe, the study explores the reputation of media among informed population in Romania. A sample of 100 cases was involved in the online survey taking place in December 2019. The results provide a description of the country’s media reputation (media in general: radio, print, digital and television). For each one of these media, the valuation obtained by each of the reputational attributes (credibility, rigor, impartiality, willingness to rectify) by the informed population would be indicated. Moreover, insights on the knowledge and use, as well as on the reputation (overall and by category, considering ten key reputation aspects) - of twelve selected media - would be provided.