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…