Time-lag analysis of the agenda-building process between White House public relations and congressional policymaking activity

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between public relations efforts and policymaking activity during a non-election setting. Design/methodology/approach Using a time-lag design, this study used content analysis to examine public relations materials and policymaking activity during the first six months of US President Barack Obama’s second term. The public relations data were collected from the official White House website and social media. The policymaking data were collected from congressional calendars of business. Findings The data revealed varying degrees of support across the three levels of agenda-building for issues, attributes, and issue/attribute co-occurrence. Contrary to the expected relationship that public relations drives policymaking activity, the data suggest that policymaking activity was a stronger predictor of public relations material. Research limitations/implications This study provides modest support for time-lag agenda-building effects across three levels. However, future experimental research is needed to truly assess causal relationships. Future research should also explore alternative sources of data for policymaking activity. Practical implications This study demonstrates that the efficacy of information subsidy types is not uniform and should be chosen strategically. Traditional subsidy types were most effective for driving issues, while digital subsidy types provided more useful outlets for driving issue attributes. Originality/value This study contributes to political public relations scholarship by exploring the temporal relationships between public relations efforts and policymaking activity in a non-election setting. The time-lag design serves as an exploratory inquiry into the agenda-building process.

Reciprocal influence? Investigating implicit frames in press releases and financial newspaper coverage during the German banking crisis

“…Hence, this result seems to be in line with previous findings that have shown press releases to be aligned to news making style (Gandy, 1982;Manheim, 1994;Turk, 1986). Furthermore, the findings also support recent research that has provided evidence for reciprocal influences within agenda-building processes (e.g., Ragas, 2013;Schweigert et al, 2016).…”

“…In examining corporate information subsidies and financial media coverage related to activist shareholder campaigns in the U.S. stock market, Ragas (2013) has not only shown that issues that were given prominence in news releases and shareholder letters were linked with financial media, he also found evidence for mutual influences. Similarly, the study by Schweigert et al (2016) suggests temporal relationships between political public relations and policymaking, whereas policymaking activity was found to have a stronger influence on public relations efforts than the other way around. Hence, these findings provide a basis for the assumption that the media might also affect the communication of corporations.…”

“…Following this suggestion, a recent example by Schweigert et al (2016) has investigated third-level agenda-building processes between public relations material and policy activity, using a time-lag design. Hence, following these recent theoretical developments and empirical findings, the aim of this study is to explore third-level agenda-building processes between the corporate sector and the media sector over time by making use of network analyses and investigating latent links.…”

“…Hence, this study aims at extending recent developments in implicit framing and agenda-building research (cf. Guo & McCombs, 2016;Ragas et al, 2011;Schweigert et al, 2016) by testing to what extent implicit frames from the corporate sector (i.e., press releases by Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank) affect the presence of implicit frames in the media (i.e., German financial news articles) over time. The first research question thus reads: (RQ1) To what extent do German financial media assimilate their implicit frames with the two German banks Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank?…”

“…Furthermore, most of the existing studies on agenda-building theory are not taking forecasting into consideration; thus, not allowing inferences about who is more likely to influence whom (e.g., looking at correlations: Kiousis, Popescu, & Mitrook, 2007; or cross-lagged correlations: Ragas, Kim, & Kiousis, 2011). Moreover, recent developments on third-level agenda-building theory have extended the focus on latent links and network analyses (Guo & McCombs, 2016;Carroll, 2016), also using time-lag designs (e.g., Schweigert, Neil, Kim, & Kiousis, 2016). However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies so far have investigated the predictive power of latent links in the corporate sector on the presence of those links in the media for a longer period of time, using time series analyses.…”