Is business news starting to bark? How business news covers corporate social responsibility post the economic crisis

Furey, Lauren D.; Cho, Moonhee; Mohr, Tiffany L.

doi:10.1177/1464884917731180

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…There is a possibility that some of the CSR promotions were “surreptitious advertisement” (Tang, 2012, p. 282), which contributes to the dominant positive tone in the media coverage of CSR. Consistent with previous findings (Furey et al , 2019), this study also found that business newspapers were more likely to adopt a positive tone when covering CSR issues, as compared to the mainstream newspapers. A large amount of CSR-related news in business media indicates close connections between business journalists and corporate sources (Davis, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Thus, it seemed that CSR was portrayed in a positive way regardless of the geographical variances. Our sample consisted of both business sections (Furey et al , 2019) and other news sections covering CSR issues, such as letters and news stories promoting companies’ CSR achievements and interviews featuring companies’ CSR performances. There is a possibility that some of the CSR promotions were “surreptitious advertisement” (Tang, 2012, p. 282), which contributes to the dominant positive tone in the media coverage of CSR.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, throwing different languages together in topic modeling in the data analysis was problematic to generate consistent hidden themes. Fourth, our selected news outlets aligned with those in previous media coverage of CSR-related research (Buhr and Grafström, 2007; Furey, et al , 2019; Grafström and Windell, 2011). To balance the number of news articles in each country/region for the final analysis, we cannot include all news outlets in the US and UK; Otherwise, the amount of news articles in the Western context will be significantly larger than the combination of mainland China and HK, resulting in sample biases.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Understand corporate social responsibility from an agenda setting perspective: a cross-national analysis of newspaper using computer-assisted content analysis

Zhang

Dong

2021

JGR

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Purpose This study aims to explore multifaceted corporate social responsibility (CSR) covered in popular English newspapers in the UK, USA, mainland China and Hong Kong from 2000 to 2016 via a computer-assisted analytical approach. This study moves the understanding of CSR away from corporate self-reporting to the mass media and raises interesting questions about the role of the news media in presenting CSR as a multifaceted, socially constructed concept. Design/methodology/approach Data were retrieved from CSR-related news articles from 2000 to 2016 that were archived in the LexisNexis database. Guided by the theoretical framework of agenda setting, a computer-assisted content analysis (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) was used to analyze 4,487 CSR-related articles from both business and non-business news sources. Analysis of variance was used to compare salient CSR topics in each country/region. Findings This study identifies newspapers as an alternate to corporations’ attempts to distribute CSR information and construct CSR meaning. The findings revealed that the news communicates a variety of CSR issues that are aligned or beyond what CSR was defined in corporate CSR reporting, as suggested in previous studies. In addition, CSR news coverages differ between the business and nonbusiness news sources. Furthermore, the media tone of CSR coverage significantly differed across the regions and between the business and nonbusiness newspapers. Social implications Emerging topics in CSR news coverage, such as business education, could help companies identify untapped CSR realms in the market. Originality/value This study contributes to CSR communication research by adding a non-corporate perspective regarding what CSR means and should be focused on. The news media presents CSR using a heterogeneous approach as they not only provide surface reports on corporations’ CSR activities but also offer in-depth discussions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Understand corporate social responsibility from an agenda setting perspective: a cross-national analysis of newspaper using computer-assisted content analysis

Zhang

Dong

2021

JGR

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“…Conversely, previous research has confirmed the media's watchdog role for economic news (Kalogeropoulos et al, 2015). Similarly, Furey et al (2019) found that the media coverage of CSR has become less positive after the financial crisis. Although the criticism in the aftermath of the financial crisis was mainly levelled against journalists, this could have impacted the other news producers as well, since their audiences might have become more suspicious of positive tone, too.…”

Section: Tone Before and After The Financial Crisismentioning

confidence: 91%

Tone variation in financial news: A comparison of companies, journalists and financial analysts

Pollach

Hansen

2021

European Journal of Communication

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This article reports the findings of a comparative study of the financial news produced by companies, financial analysts, financial newspapers and news agencies about the same news events, including data before and after the financial crisis. We ground this study in second-level agenda-setting, according to which news producers select substantive and evaluative attributes for the issues they cover. Using computer-assisted text analysis, we conduct pairwise comparisons of the evaluative tone of corporate quarterly earnings press releases and the corresponding analyst reports and news stories. Our overall hypothesis is that these actors produce news about the same events with an evaluative tone that furthers their own goals as well as the goals of those actors they are dependent on, which we find partial support for. We find a positivity bias in corporate earnings press releases and analyst reports, while financial journalists eliminate the corporate positivity bias, but do not add more negativity. The results also indicate differences in the tone of financial news before and after the financial crisis. Although all actors produce news in the period after the financial crisis that is less positive and less negative than before the crisis, the balance of positive and negative tone as well as relative differences among the actors suggest that news writing by financial journalists at financial newspapers and news agencies is more negative in tone after the financial crisis, thus providing also empirical support of their independence.

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“…In the new media environment, however, some have questioned the agenda-setting role (Bennett and Iyengar, 2008;Furey et al, 2017;Meraz, 2011;Vonbun et al, 2016). The argument is that in the current fragmented and polarized media context, a shared and homogeneous agenda, which is the basic assumption of agenda-setting theory, no longer exists, especially for attributes of issues or objects.…”

Section: Agenda-setting Effects and How They Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

How agenda setting works: A dual path model and motivated reasoning

Lee

2019

Journalism

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This study examines whether agenda-setting effects occur along dual paths and what role motivated goals play in that process. Based on an experimental design that employed a specially constructed news website, this study examined whether dual paths of agenda setting – a casual path and deliberative path – depend on types of motivated goals, that is, whether individuals have motivations to look for accurate news or like-minded news. The role that motivated goals play in the agenda-setting process is important, especially in the new media environment, because audiences’ news consumption has become politically polarized and aligned with their prior beliefs, which may lead them to have perceptions that are contradictory to those of the media about what issues are important and how to think about those issues. Findings of this study showed that a deliberative path – that is, reading more articles – was likely to result in higher agenda-setting effects. A deliberative path also led to even greater agenda-setting effects for individuals with accuracy goals compared to individuals with directional goals. A casual path led to greater agenda-setting effects for individuals with directional goals than for those with accuracy goals.

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Is business news starting to bark? How business news covers corporate social responsibility post the economic crisis

Cited by 10 publications

References 35 publications

Understand corporate social responsibility from an agenda setting perspective: a cross-national analysis of newspaper using computer-assisted content analysis

Understand corporate social responsibility from an agenda setting perspective: a cross-national analysis of newspaper using computer-assisted content analysis

Tone variation in financial news: A comparison of companies, journalists and financial analysts

How agenda setting works: A dual path model and motivated reasoning

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