RIAA, MPAA, and the Digital Piracy Issue: Comparing Public Relations Strategies and Effectiveness.

The downloading of copyrighted content has been a common concern for the motion picture and music recording industries, but their public relations response has been quite different. While the motion picture industry has addressed the issue through educational efforts, consumer awareness programs, and legislative action, the music recording industry has pursued an aggressive strategy of legal action against file sharers while seeking to minimize negative publicity resulting from lawsuits. In order to compare the effectiveness of the two approaches in framing this issue, this study content analyzed press releases from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as media coverage of the digital piracy issue. A significant, moderate correlation of attributes used to frame this issue was found between the RIAA press releases and media coverage, but not between the MPAA press releases and the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]