Media Effects Theory

Media effects are anything occurring to an individual, a group, an institution, the public, or society at large as a result—either wholly or in part—of exposure to the media. Corporate reputation is the public’s collective judgments of a corporation based on assessments of a company’s attributes, such as its product or services, innovation, workplace, governance, citizenship, leadership, and financial performance. As the news media are one of the primary information sources through which the public learns about corporations, scholars and industry professionals have viewed corporate reputation as the result of media effects. One theory often invoked by scholars to explain the effects of the media on corporate reputation is agenda-setting theory. This entry first explains the six types of media effects and discusses the correspondence between various types of media effects and dimensions of corporate reputation. It then discusses agenda-setting theory as an explanation of media effects on corporate reputation and ends by describing the limitations of previous research on media effects.

Six Types of Media Effects

Media effects can be categorized into six types: (1) cognitive effects, (2) belief effects, (3) attitudinal effects, (4) affective effects, (5) physiological effects, and (6) behavioral effects. These effects are based on what part of a person is affected or the characteristics of an experience that people go through as a result of media exposure. These effects are closely related to one another, as one becomes the antecedent of another. For example, scholars supporting the theory of planned behavior posit that beliefs influence attitudes, which in turn influence behavior. Memory-based information-processing theory posits that memory precedes attitude change and that attitude change precedes behavioral change.

Cognitive media effects are those that relate to people’s process of storing and retrieving information. Examples of cognitive effects include someone being exposed to a campaign message and recalling the message or being exposed to advertising for a product and recalling the product. People use existing knowledge when acquiring new information; when exposed to new information, they recognize the information by linking it to related information, and they understand the new information based on the characteristics of the related information. Similarly, people use mental categories based on associations among subjects, issues, or their attributes when retrieving information. A person is more likely to retrieve two pieces of information simultaneously when the two subjects or issues, or their attributes, are more strongly associated.

Media effects on beliefs are those that increase the probability that people will associate a subject or an issue with an attribute. As an individual’s direct experience is limited, the media constantly construct people’s beliefs by showing certain aspects of the world or framing an object or an issue in certain ways. For example, if the media often use the term innovation in relation to the tech giant Apple, the public is more likely to associate Apple with innovation and to believe that innovation is a core attribute of Apple.

The media effects on attitudes relate to people’s judgments about certain subjects or issues or their attributes or associations; these judgments are usually denoted as favorable/unfavorable or positive/negative. Although individuals have their own autonomy to make judgments, frequent exposure to media messages that portray a subject or an issue in either a positive or a negative way can affect people’s judgment about the object or issue. For example, if media coverage repeatedly portrays Walmart as an unethical company in relation to employee benefits, people may think of Walmart as unethical and become unfavorable toward the company as an outcome of exposure to the media message. The media can either reinforce or change existing attitudes or create new attitudes.

The media effects on affect relate to people’s feelings, emotions, or moods toward an object or an issue. Affect is different from attitude but can be the basis for attitudes. Media messages can trigger emotions such as laughter, love, fear, sadness, and anger. People may also use the media to help them manage their negative emotions by listening to music, watching television, or playing games.

A physiological effect is an automatic body response that usually occurs without conscious thought. The body response can be purely automatic, such as pupil dilation, blood pressure, or galvanic skin response, or quasi-automatic, such as heart rate or sexual responses. For example, when people watch a scary movie, their heart rate and blood pressure may increase and their palms may get sweaty. This is the natural “fight-or-flight” response humans developed millennia ago as a reaction to predators or other stressful stimuli.

A behavioral effect relates to the overt actions of an individual. The behaviors of interest are subsequent behavior after exposure to particular media messages, such as product purchase, engaging in prosocial behavior, civic participation, voting, or quitting smoking. The media can either reinforce or change existing behaviors or create new behaviors.

In addition to the specific types of media effects, there are other aspects of the effects to consider. All media effects can occur immediately or over the long term (timing), last a short time or a long time (duration), lead to positive effects or negative effects (valence), bring changes or reinforce existing attitudes or behavior (change), have intentional or unintentional influence (intention), occur at the individual level or the macrolevel (level), and exert direct or indirect effects (direct and indirect).

Media Effects and Corporate Reputation

Corporate reputation is a multidimensional concept comprising organizational prominence (i.e., top-of-mind awareness), organizational public esteem, and organizational attributes or qualities. First, organizational prominence, also called top-of-mind awareness, is the salience of a corporation in the public’s mind and is closely related to the cognitive type of media effects. For example, if a company is highly visible in the news media at some point in time, people will recall that company more than other companies at that point in time. Second, organizational public esteem refers to the degree to which the public likes, trusts, admires, and respects a company. The salience of a company’s affective attribute in the media can influence how the public thinks about the company. This dimension is closely related to the affective type of media effects. Third, organizational attributes or qualities relate to the perceived salience of a company’s attributes or qualities. If the media portray a company with a specific attribute, the public is more likely to associate the company with that attribute. These effects are related to the belief type of media effects. Global corporate reputation, which encompasses all the aforementioned dimensions, is the public’s overall evaluation, assessment, or judgment of a company on various performance attributes and is closely related to the attitudinal type of media effects while also encompassing cognitive, belief-related, and affective effects.

Agenda-Setting Theory

Scholars have explained the effects of the media on corporate reputation using agenda-setting theory, one of the classical media effects theories, by matching the salience of a company or the attributes of a company in the media with various dimensions of corporate reputation. The first level of agenda setting posits that the media determine what the public thinks about, and the second level of agenda setting posits that the media determine how the public thinks about a subject or issue. There are two types of second-level agenda setting: (1) affective attribute agenda setting and (2) substantive attribute agenda setting.

First, adapting the conceptual framework of the first level of agenda setting, the theory suggests that the media determine which companies the public will think about. It posits that the salience of a company in media coverage will be positively related to the level of the company’s prominence, or top-of-mind awareness, among the public. A company must achieve some level of visibility for the public to be aware of the company before they evaluate the company.

Applying the second level of agenda setting, the theory suggests that the media determine how the public will think about a company. With regard to the affective attribute, agenda-setting theory focuses on the transfer of the tone of media coverage of a company to the salience of the affective attribute of the company in the public’s perception. The theory posits that the salience of the affective attributes of a company (i.e., favorability) in media coverage will be positively related to the level of the company’s public esteem.

The concept of substantive affective attribute agenda setting is that the salience of the substantive attributes of companies (e.g., leadership, social responsibility, or financial performance) in media coverage will be positively related to the perceived salience of the companies’ attributes in public opinion. The news media often pay attention to a specific company attribute or an issue tied to a substantive attribute, rather than discussing all aspects of the company. The salience of a substantive attribute of a company in media coverage can be related to what attribute of a company the public perceives to be most important and cognitively associates with the company.

Limitations

Studies of media effects on corporate reputation have largely consisted of using the various levels of agenda-setting theory as a theoretical framework to explain the media effects on corporate reputation, and empirical studies have generally supported the propositions mentioned earlier. Such research, however, is subject to limitations in three areas: (1) the application of the different levels of theory, (2) types of media, and (3) media effects theory. First, although specific types of media effects need to be lined up with individual dimensions of corporate reputation, some of the previous studies did not consider these in a systematic way and thus have generated mixed results. For example, some studies connected the substantive attributes of companies in the media to the overall reputation of the companies rather than to the associations that the public form linking a company with a specific substantive attribute. Similarly, other scholars have matched the salience of affective attributes in the media to overall corporate reputation.

Second, although various types of media can produce media effects, most of the studies of media effects on corporate reputation have been limited to mass media and, specifically, the news media. The public has other channels through which to learn about corporations, including websites and social media. Living in today’s digital and social media era, scholars need to pay more attention to a broader spectrum of media in order to advance corporate reputation research. Last, in media effects and corporate reputation research, there has been little consideration of audiences as active users of the media; individual factors such as involvement with an issue, degree of media use, and demographics have rarely been taken into account.

Corporate reputation has only risen to prominence as an area of research over the past decade and a half, and the history of looking at corporate reputation as a result of media effects is even shorter. Elaboration and clarification of the concepts and methods are still necessary. Viewing corporate reputation as the result of media effects has opened up the door to the field of communication. Researchers need to take advantage of this opportunity by adapting a wider range of media effects theories and research from communication, as many of these have been studied and attested for several decades. As media channels have become more diversified, the importance of media effects on corporate reputation has become even greater than before.