Presentation of CEOs in the media: A framing analysis
Chief executive officers as representatives of their companies are increasingly the focus of attention from both the public and the media. The head manager represents the company and in some cases even personifies it. The growing exposure of chief executive officers has turned some of these individuals into celebrities and media stars. Some studies have shown that the image of the chief executive officer is closely linked to that of the company. However, the presentation of chief executive officers in media coverage has received little research interest. The present study aims to fill this research gap by conducting a content analysis of two German newspapers and one magazine published from…
Advertising in disguise? How disclosure and content features influence the effects of native advertising
Abstract Native advertising has recently become a prominent buzzword for advertisers and publishers alike. It describes advertising formats which closely adapt their form and style to the editorial environment they appear in, intending to hide the commercial character of these ads. In two experimental studies, we test how advertising disclosures in native ads on news websites affect recipients’ attitudes towards a promoted brand in a short and long-term perspective. In addition, we explore persuasion through certain content features (i. e., message sidedness and use of exemplars) and how they affect disclosure effects. Results show that disclosures increase perceived persuasive intent but d…
News Selection Within Customer Magazines
Customer magazines blur the boundaries between journalistic reporting and organizational information. On the one hand, customer magazines are intended to communicate the interests, brands, products, and services of an organization. On the other hand, their topics, style, and layout resemble those of journalistic publications, from which readers expect independent and objective reporting. While customer magazines are distributed in high numbers throughout different industries and play an increasingly important role in the media landscape, they have hardly been the focus of researchers to date. It is therefore quite unclear how editorial decisions are made within these publications. This stud…
Populist Words Speak Louder? Ideology-Inconsistent Personalization and Voting for Populist Candidates
Abstract The private background of populist politicians oftentimes seemingly contradicts the populist ideology—which can be taken up in political communication. Using two experiments (nStudy 1 = 734; nStudy 2 = 568), we investigate the effects of such ideology-inconsistent personalization on the evaluation of and voting for a populist candidate. We manipulate the politician’s localness and social class (Study 1) and traditionalism in family life (Study 2). Results reveal a number of effects on candidate evaluation which translated into voting intentions. An upper-class background of the populist politician yielded negative effects, but less so among populist voters. However, references to a…
Faces of companies: Personalization of corporate coverage in crisis and non-crisis periods
Journalists need to make complex economic issues comprehensible for their readers. One possibility to do so is using personalization and putting company representatives (e.g. CEO, spokesperson) instead of the company as an organization in the focus of their work. Especially in times of crisis, the use of personalization could increase because crises are often associated with great uncertainty and complexity. Therefore, this study examines personalization in corporate coverage during crisis and non-crisis periods. To this end, we analyzed the coverage of four different German print media before, during, and after six selected corporate crises using a quantitative content analysis. The study…
Fake News als Gefahr für die öffentliche Meinung?
Der Umgang mit sogenannten Fake News, also bewusst gestreuten Falschinformationen, ist eine zentrale Herausforderung fur Journalist*innen, Politiker*innen, Regulierungsbehorden, aber auch fur Unternehmen und andere Organisationen. Obwohl derartige Falschmeldungen ein altbekanntes Phanomen sind, mit denen sich der Journalismus seit seinen Anfangsjahren auseinandersetzen musste, gewannen sie in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten deutlich an Relevanz. Dies resultiert insbesondere aus der Verbreitung sozialer Medien: Traten Journalist*innen bis Ende der 1990er Jahre noch als entscheidende Gatekeeper auf, die Informationen pruften, kritisch hinterfragten und ihnen Relevanz und damit Nachrichtenwert be…