Agenda-setting Effects of Business News on the Public's Images and Opinions about Major Corporations

Abstract

Although the agenda-setting effects of the news media on people's attention to, comprehension of, and opinions about topics in the news primarily have been studied in political communication settings, the central theoretical idea — the transfer of salience from the media agenda to the public agenda — fits equally well in the world of business communication. In the case of corporate reputations, only the operational definitions of the objects and attributes on these agendas are changed here to frame five key theoretical propositions about the influence of news coverage on corporate reputations among the public. This presentation of five basic propositions about first and second-level agenda setting effects as well as intermedia agenda-setting effects offers a theoretical roadmap for systematic empirical research into the influence of the mass media on corporate reputations.