Did we make it to the news? Effects of actual and perceived media coverage on media orientations of communication professionals

Abstract

The aim of this study is to assess the mass media orientations of communication professionals: Is past media coverage for their organization related to the way communication professionals currently evaluate the importance of the media for their organizations? Following the debates on mediatization and reciprocal effects of media coverage, we assume that the amount and the tone of media coverage matter for the media orientations of communication professionals. In our analysis, we discern between actual and perceived characteristics of media attention. A quantitative content analysis was used to analyze the actual characteristics of media coverage for public and for-profit organizations as well as non-profit organizations. A survey was conducted to analyze the perceptions of coverage and mass media orientations of Dutch communication professionals working for those organizations. For public organizations, actual media favorability and perceived visibility turned out to be important predictors of the media orientation 'attention seeking'. The organizations were rather homogeneous in their relations between actual and perceived media coverage and the media orientation 'strategic impact'. This orientation was best predicted by volume of coverage, the substantiality of issues that were covered, and perceived visibility. Our results point at the importance of taking perceptive data into account when predicting media orientations. The amount and tone of media coverage about organizations varies widely between different organizations. Some companies show, whether intended or not, high levels of visibility, whereas some small public sector organizations can be considered as 'media virgins' (Andrews & Caren, 2010; Capriotti, 2007; Deacon & Monk, 2001; Schillemans, 2012). Several studies have examined factors that can account for these differences, such as the type of organization, its domain, its organizational capacity, and its media strategies (Capriotti, 2007; Reich, 2010). Even more interesting than focusing on differences in media visibility and the tone of coverage is the analysis of their consequences. Media coverage of an organization influences its reputation (

Serving the Media Ministers: A Mixed Methods Study on the Personalization of Ministerial Communication

“…Contemporary governments and public agencies have professionalized communication and expanded their communication units (Heffernan 2006; Sanders and Canel 2013). These communication experts are primarily recruited from the journalism domain although public relations, marketing, and other social science backgrounds are also common (Jacobs and Wonneberger 2017; Sanders and Canel 2013). Principles from public relations, such as exploiting news conventions to promote central branches of government, are increasingly employed (Figenschou and Thorbjørnsrud 2015), and such proactive strategies may personalize ministerial communication to promote a favorable image in the media of the minister and his or her portfolio.…”

Media positioning: comparing organizations’ standing in the news

“…A quantitative content analysis of the media coverage of 61 Dutch organizations was conducted. The data form part of a larger study that also included a survey among communication professionals ( Jacobs and Wonneberger, 2017). The selection of organizations for the present study was guided by several theoretically informed selection criteria that were applied to ensure high variation of media attention within different institutional settings: with companies, public organizations, and NGOs three different types of organizations were chosen.…”

“…Communication professionals in public sector organizations experience that the tone that is used to cover their organizations is more negative than the one that is used for corporations (Liu et al, 2010). However, organizations' portrayal in the media not necessarily matches with perceptions of communication professionals ( Jacobs and Wonneberger, 2017). Since NGOs can be considered as less powerful actors in society and as they are established to "do the right things," we expect that coverage regarding NGOs will have a more positive tone than articles on corporations and public organizations:…”

Automated Visual Content Analysis (AVCA) in Communication Research: A Protocol for Large Scale Image Classification with Pre-Trained Computer Vision Models

“…However, since websites are built with different designs and architectures, researchers may need to adapt the scraper for every single website (in case of a cross-sectional study). For researchers interested in news imagery, for instance, to view the effects of mediatization on organizations (Jacobs & Wonneberger, 2017;Pallas & Fredriksson, 2013), databases such as Factiva can be accessed to download images or, alternatively, the news media archives of interest.…”

“…Last, news image analysis is of interest to all sorts of communication researchers: public relation scholars in the relationship between news imagery and corporate reputation can employ AVCA for large-scale image analysis of online news images (Jacobs & Wonneberger, 2017), also over time. In political communication, studies comparing media bias in politicians' portrayals across off-and online news media could shed light on channel-specific differences in light of the importance of visuals online (Peng, 2018).…”