Framing the Game: Assessing the Impact of Cultural Representations on Consumer Perceptions of Legitimacy

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to understand how media frames affect consumer judgments of legitimacy. Because frames exist on the sociocultural and individual level, our research takes a multimethod approach to this question. On the sociocultural level, we conduct a content analysis of operant media frames for discussing online gambling and perform an event analysis, finding that a shift in consumer judgments follows an abrupt shift in frame. Then, on the individual level, the causal mechanism for these shifts is investigated in an experimental setting using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). These experiments show that framing affects normative legitimacy judgments by changing implicit associations. Further, users and nonusers respond differently to frame elements, with users favoring an established frame and nonusers favoring a novel, legitimating frame. This suggests that media frames play a critical role in establishing legitimacy at the sociocultural level and that framing potentially bridges cognitive and normative legitimacy.

The Sustainable Seafood Movement Is a Governance Concert, with the Audience Playing a Key Role

“…The use of marketing to spread acceptance for social messages requires pre-existing cultural knowledge to be in place [87]. This includes broader cultural trends as well as context specific to the social message.…”

NGOs in the News: The Road to Taken-for-Grantedness

“…Prior research on legitimacy and media frames has shown that media evaluations affect normative legitimacy (Deephouse 1996;Zimmerman and Zeitz 2002). However, Humphreys and LaTour (2013) maintain that media frames do not just result in changes to normative evaluations, but can directly impact cognitive evaluations as well. Their research revealed that when the new label ''gaming'' replaced the old label ''gambling,'' nongamblers responded positively and ''had more associations with the legitimate practice after being shown the new label, ''gaming'' (Humphreys and LaTour 2013, p. 788).…”

“…Thus, although the newspapers may cater to a different readership and present a different focus-'center, right business' versus 'liberal news story and editorial'-they were chosen for this study due to their agenda-setting capacity. Moreover, as previously indicated, media accounts reflect the development of cognitive legitimacy (Baum and Powell 1995;Dowling and Pfeffer 1975;Hannan et al 1995;Humphreys and LaTour 2013) and are therefore useful in studies of organizational legitimacy (Deephouse and Suchman 2008). A keyword search in the LexisNexis archive was conducted for the search terms ''nongovernmental organi*ation''-the asterisk representing either an ''s'' or ''z''-from 1985 to 2010.…”

“…Analyzing frames in the media can provide a bigger picture with regard to social developments and processes (Giles and Shaw 2009;Reese 2007;Van Gorp 2007) as well as how frames communicate values and their potential to influence audience understanding and cognition (BallRokeach and Rokeach 1987;Price et al 1997). In their study of framing and legitimacy of casinos and online gambling, Humphreys and LaTour (2013) also found that media frames can influence cognitive legitimacy. They maintain that frames have the power to direct audience attention to or from particular aspects of an organization, industry, product, or issue.…”

“…The authors concluded that normative legitimacy judgments had been mediated by cognitive legitimacy. [Note the distinction between the use of the term label by Humphreys and LaTour (2013) and Hsu and Hannan (2005) the former use it in the context of frame name or description, while for the latter the term represents categorical classifications. ] Labeling is part of the categorization process involved in organizational identity formation (Glynn and Navis 2013).…”