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The unprecedented power of Big Tech corporations and the complexity of regulating them requires considering the role of news media as a corporate accountability mechanism. The aim of this article is to examine news media's watchdog role through a performative lens, extending it to the corporate context by looking at three manifestations of performance: media visibility, way of coverage, and sourcing patterns. Based on a longitudinal quantitative content analysis of 920 news stories on Big Tech from four media outlets (2000–2021) in the United States and Germany, we explain variances in the watchdog role taking an over-time, cross-country, and cross-political leaning perspective. Our findings suggest that Big Tech corporations receive little but increasing media attention over the years that is driven by events. Similarly, news coverage contains an increasingly strong presence of a detached watchdog role performance. A more interventionist watchdog role is also on the rise – even though marginally – and political actors are increasingly given a voice in news coverage. From a comparative perspective, our results show that Big Tech corporations are more visible in the US and across right leaning news outlets. US journalists exhibit a more detached approach, while German journalists perform a significantly higher interventionist performance. Corporate sources are overall prominent in the media arena yet dominate more in the US. In conclusion, US and German news media are critical but passive observers over Big Tech corporations and can therefore be labeled a tame yet increasingly growling watchdog when it comes to holding Big Tech accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To advance our understanding of social media effects, it is crucial to incorporate the increasingly prevalent visual media into our investigation. In this article, we discuss the theoretical opportunities of automated visual analysis for the study of social media effects and present an overview of existing computational methods that can facilitate this. Specifically, we highlight the gap between the outputs of existing computer vision tools and the theoretical concepts relevant to media effects research. We propose multiple approaches to bridging this gap in automated visual analysis, such as justifying the theoretical significance of specific visual features in existing tools, developing supervised learning models to measure a visual attribute of interest, and applying unsupervised learning to discover meaningful visual themes and categories. We conclude with a discussion about future directions for automated visual analysis in computational communication research, such as the development of benchmark datasets designed to reflect more theoretically meaningful concepts and the incorporation of large language models and multimodal channels to extract insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various organizations employ framing in their public affairs strategies to influence public and political issue debates. However, how frames are built by actors before lobbying activities remains a black box. Thus, to outline the origins of strategic frames, we investigate perceptions and understandings of the frame-building process by public affairs (PA) professionals across corporations, public organizations, and interest groups. Besides framing theory and the hierarchical influence model, this study draws on a strategic communication and institutional theory perspective on PA as an organizational practice. By means of qualitative interviews with PA professionals from a diverse set of 24 Dutch organizations, we propose a model of perceived frame-building from issue emergence, the assessment of issue viability, via frame construction and alignment to legitimation. The model reflects aspects of the frame-building process as understood by PA professionals and categorized by the authors into individual, organizational, and routine factors, as well as context and timing. It enriches our understanding of the way PA professionals perceive organizational influence in framing contests and policymaking through their strategic frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the "visual turn" online, images have become increasingly important for companies to attract stakeholders to their online CSR communication. To investigate in how far businesses' visual sustainability language reflects a balanced triple bottom line, this study compared the most profitable European corporations' websites images (N = 21,841) and visual Twitter posts (N = 3,637) through automated content analysis using computer vision algorithms. The findings of this big data‐analysis reveal that European companies overemphasize the financial bottom line on both owned and shared media. The channel matters as firms are more likely to communicate people‐, planet‐, and profit‐related images via social media than their website. Corporations from environmentally sensitive industries tend to highlight the social dimension, though this is where they impact less, and do so more often through their website. Thus, this study confirms the criticism that the business case is dominant in CSR strategies also for visual communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing volume of images published online in a wide variety of contexts requires communication researchers to address this reality by analyzing visual content at a large scale. Ongoing advances in computer vision to automatically detect objects, concepts, and features in images provide a promising opportunity for communication research. We propose a research protocol for Automated Visual Content Analysis (AVCA) to enable large-scale content analysis of images. It offers inductive and deductive ways to use commercial pre-trained models for theory building in communication science. Using the example of corporations' website images on sustainability, we show in a step-by-step fashion how to classify a large sample (N = 21,876) of images with unsupervised and supervised machine learning, as well as custom models. The possibilities and pitfalls of these approaches are discussed, ethical issues are addressed, and application examples for future communication research are detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholders debate issues of public interest in global online issue arenas, but political decision makers decide on these macro issues at national and supranational levels. A better understanding of the role of organizations in forming and monitoring such issue debates is necessary, given the influence of public affairs activities and media debates on politicians' and public opinion. However, such a macro perspective is largely missing. This study analyzes the debate around the use of the pesticide glyphosate when the European Union decided on a license renewal in 2017. To uncover emerging salient topics and their relations with organizations, the online global coverage of the issue from the GDELT database (N = 1677) was analyzed using inductive automated content analysis (LDA topic modeling). Only three topics were salient in the arena, most prominently the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, thereby sidelining other relevant aspects. Furthermore, online issue arenas reach globally and are converged communicative spaces where a variety of media participate. Thus, the article develops and tests a typology of online news media for issue arena research. Advancing theory on organizations' roles and strategies in these online issue arenas, a new classification of actors based on their visibility and communication strategy is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the framing strategies lobbyists apply to influence public policy in a case on nuclear emission data in Switzerland. Framing analysis is at the heart of communication science and has been applied in lobbying settings, but framing theory has not yet been fine‐tuned to the specificities of public affairs research. This qualitative case study gives insights into the dominant frames seven actors ranging from corporations to nongovernmental organizations to public institutions employ to defend a legal court case in the nuclear power industry. The results of the document analysis and the interviews show that frames travel among diverse actors and only some are picked up by the courts, at times stating a position opposite to the one initially intended by the frame sponsor. A public affairs‐specific integrated process model of framing is presented that views the media in the role of a moderator in the framing process and pronounces the lobbying organizations' strategic goals, the different stakeholders as target audiences, and the outcomes of the public affairs process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the field of strategic communication has been criticized for lacking a coherent theoretical synthesis. Recognizing that strategic communication is a sub-discipline of communication science, we study how the field is anchored in the corpus of established communication theories – including social science, interpretative, and critical approaches. To describe the use, development, and context of communication theories in strategic communication publications, we analyzed all articles published in ten public relations/ corporate communication/ organizational communication/ strategic communication journals over twenty years (N = 4,027). While the vast majority of articles did not refer to one of the 91 communication theories, the share of references to these theories has been increasing. Overall, we found a high diversity of approaches – with considerable differences among journals – indicating a broad discourse. However, we also found a growing relevance of the social science paradigm. We argue that a stronger focus on communication theories may facilitate a consilient synthesis and increase the relevance of the field, academically and practically. We therefore propose to strengthen the communication science perspective in strategic communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we posit that corporate political activities (CPA) such as lobbying make use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to advance instrumental goals. We juxtapose the theoretical foundations of the normative concept of political CSR and the strategic notion of nonmarket strategy to show that they are in opposition conceptually regarding the role of corporations in public policy. Using a systematic theoretical comparison along seven dimensions, we discuss the juxtapositions and identify the common ground of the two theories. Building on examples from the alcohol industry, we describe how CPA uses instrumental CSR to advance goals in public policy—we call this politicized CSR. Hence, we illustrate the shift from political to politicized CSR, a misuse of CSR for purposes of CPA, and discuss consequences for the theory and practice of public affairs and CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credibility is central to communication but often jeopardized by "credibility gaps." This is especially true for communication about corporate social responsibility (CSR). To date, no tool has been available to analyze stakeholders' credibility perceptions of CSR communication. This article presents a series of studies conducted to develop a scale to assess the perceived credibility of CSR reports, one of CSR communication's most important tools. The scale provides a novel operationalization of credibility using validity claims of Habermas's ideal speech situation as subdimensions. The scale development process, carried out in five studies including a literature review, a Delphi study, and three validation studies applying confirmatory factor analysis, resulted in the 16-item Perceived Credibility (PERCRED) scale. The scale shows convergent, discriminant, concurrent, and nomological validity and is the first validated measure for analyzing credibility perceptions of CSR reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, researchers have claimed that food and beverage corporations should be excluded from the development of public health policy because their lobbying activities strategically undermine the promotion of public health. At the same time, recent political corporate social responsibility (CSR) theory holds that corporations have a responsibility to help solve global public issues. We address this described misalignment and show that corporations may fulfill this “new political role” if they turn to novel forms of corporate political activity (CPA) establishing a minimal standard for not contradicting their CSR. Therefore, we put forward a normative concept called deliberative lobbying based on discourse, transparency, and accountability, which aims to resolve public issues and advance CPA. In three lobbying cases, we show misalignments and contradictions that harm both society and the corporation. We position deliberative lobbing as an argument to maintain self-regulation against critics claiming that corporations should be excluded from all political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As researchers pursue connections between strategic communication and management, they need to critique practices to develop norms that increase strategic communication’s long-term contribution to society. Norms of strategic communication are shaped by socially constructed standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and guide how strategic communication fosters organization-public relationships (OPR). Such norms are particularly important regarding deliberative strategic communication, which uses political CSR to guide corporations’ political role. Although principles of OPR and political CSR should foster more ethical strategic communication, some practices weaken such standards. To make that case, this article (1) reviews the historical foundations of deliberative discourse, (2) examines principles of OPR and political CSR, and (3) applies normative principles of deliberative discourse (4) to critique three cases of strategic political communication, known as astroturf lobbying, a deceptive lobbying practice that undermines and fakes grassroots movements. We conclude by integrating the findings into theory building that shifts CSR outcomes from advantaging individual organizations adding value to society. This theme uses ‘creating shared value’ to advocateshared strategic communication. This notion includes the normative claims of political CSR (open discourse, participation, transparency, accountability) to arrive atshared strategic communicationthat supports the ‘good’ organization and society simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ' Leximancer', ' Crawdad', and ' Wordle', and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed-method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three-step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to deepen the understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting practices toward stakeholder group investors. Quantitative content analysis was applied to 437 articles of CSR reports from the chemicals, and banking and insurance industries in Germany and Switzerland. The results were benchmarked to the Sarasin sustainability rating's weighting of social and environmental industry risks. It was found that the chemicals industry's CSR reports meet the benchmark, whereas those from the banking and insurance industry do not (RQ1). Swiss chemicals producers perform well in reporting on their specific industry risks, while German companies mirror the sector-specific risks in the banking and insurance industry (RQ2). The results thus indicate the appropriateness of investor-specific reporting and suggest - in line with GRI and the European Union - further standardization in order to level the playing field of CSR in Europe. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging in comparative lobbying research is a challenging task, because public affairs is complex and highly context‐dependent. Thus, qualitative case studies have been researchers' primary choice. However, the case method has been subject to much debate surrounding its rigor, in terms of reliability, internal validity, and generalizability, and particularly its potential for theory building. To propose a framework for researchers conducting lobbying case studies as well as for reviewers receiving such work, we apply a positivistic approach on case study rigor from management studies and expand the framework to tackle the specific challenges of comparative qualitative lobbying research. Thus, we expand the research framework by a set of variables specific to public affairs: We add enrichment for internal validity, contextuality, and comparability for external validity, interdisciplinarity for construct validity, and hypertext‐searchable databases for reliability. Thereby, we aim to transfer the lessons learned from management studies in terms of rigorous qualitative case studies to public affairs to help build novel and explanatory theory in the field and to provide guidance to researchers how to design a rigorous case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]