Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 245–247
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Public Relations Review
Research in Brief
Exposure to sided media coverage of an organization, subsequent group conversations, and public relations outcomes
Hyung Min Lee a,∗ , Brian G. Southwell b , Yoshikazu Suzuki c
a b c
Department of Media Communication, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
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a b s t r a c t
We experimentally found a negative effect of subsequent group conversations after media exposure on the audience’s attitudes toward the covered organization, while we found sided media exposure to predict both attitudes and behavioral intentions relevant to the covered organization. The extent of conversational engagement immediately following media exposure also helped predict future word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. These results highlight the roles of interpersonal interactions after media exposure to explain and predict public relations outcomes. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Article history: Received 31 May 2012 Received in revised form 10 December 2012 Accepted 23 January 2013 Keywords: News coverage Media sidedness Group conversation Word-of-mouth (WOM) Attitude Behavioral intention
1. Introduction Media coverage of an organization, which more often than not results from the organization’s public relations efforts, is abundant and drawing the audience’s attention on a daily basis. Such media coverage is likely to be shared and discussed through group conversations as a result of media exposure. Namely, the effects of such media coverage are likely to be mediated or moderated by subsequent group conversations in the theoretically same way as many previous studies have uncovered (de Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006; Hornik &...