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 ...