This paper explores the extent to which firms targeted by consumer boycotts strategically react to defend their public image by using prosocial claims: expressions of the organization's commitment to ...socially acceptable norms, beliefs, and activities. We argue that prosocial claims operate as an impression management tactic meant to protect targeted firms by diluting the negative media attention attracted by the boycott. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 221 boycotts announced between 1990 and 2005. Results suggest that boycotted firms do significantly increase their prosocial claims activity after a boycott is announced. Firms are likely to react with a larger increase in prosocial claims when the boycott is more threatening (it receives more media attention), when the firm has a higher reputation, or when the firm engaged in more prosocial claims before the boycott. We demonstrate that firms fall back on their established impression management strategies when they face a reputational threat and will increase these previously perfected performances as the threat increases. In this way, the severity of a threat positively moderates the relationship between a firm's prior performance repertoire and future performance repertoire, a mechanism we refer to as "threat amplification." When an organization with high reputational standing has bolstered its position by using prosocial claims in its past performance repertoire, however, it will perceive itself to be shielded from movement attacks, decreasing the likelihood of any defensive response, a mechanism we call "buffering." Our findings contribute to impression management by exploring the use of impression management in response to a movement attack and highlighting the important role that a firm's pre-threat positioning plays in its response to an image threat.
Consumer- and producer-generated content on the Internet has become an important source of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) for buyers making purchasing decisions. However, the cultural effect of eWOM ...on firm performance remains largely unexplored. This research contributes to the extant marketing literature by examining the moderating role of culture in the relationship between eWOM and product-market performance. The author finds that individualism power distance, and uncertainty avoidance tempered the effect of eWOM on market share. In particular, the impact of press releases and negative reviews has been overrated. The findings suggest that effective online international marketing strategies should take into account local market values, country-of-origin effects, and product competition.
Exaggerated or simplistic news is often blamed for adversely influencing public health. However, recent findings suggested many exaggerations were already present in university press releases, which ...scientists approve. Surprisingly, these exaggerations were not associated with more news coverage. Here we test whether these two controversial results also arise in press releases from prominent science and medical journals. We then investigate the influence of mitigating caveats in press releases, to test assumptions that caveats harm news interest or are ignored.
Using quantitative content analysis, we analyzed press releases (N = 534) on biomedical and health-related science issued by leading peer-reviewed journals. We similarly analysed the associated peer-reviewed papers (N = 534) and news stories (N = 582). Main outcome measures were advice to readers and causal statements drawn from correlational research. Exaggerations in press releases predicted exaggerations in news (odds ratios 2.4 and 10.9, 95% CIs 1.3 to 4.5 and 3.9 to 30.1) but were not associated with increased news coverage, consistent with previous findings. Combining datasets from universities and journals (996 press releases, 1250 news), we found that when caveats appeared in press releases there was no reduction in journalistic uptake, but there was a clear increase in caveats in news (odds ratios 9.6 and 9.5 for caveats for advice and causal claims, CIs 4.1 to 24.3 and 6.0 to 15.2). The main study limitation is its retrospective correlational nature.
For health and science news directly inspired by press releases, the main source of both exaggerations and caveats appears to be the press release itself. However we find no evidence that exaggerations increase, or caveats decrease, the likelihood of news coverage. These findings should be encouraging for press officers and scientists who wish to minimise exaggeration and include caveats in their press releases.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Firms have an incentive to manage media coverage to influence their stock prices during important corporate events. Using comprehensive data on media coverage and merger negotiations, we find that ...bidders in stock mergers originate substantially more news stories after the start of merger negotiations, but before the public announcement. This strategy generates a short-lived run-up in bidders' stock prices during the period when the stock exchange ratio is determined, which substantially impacts the takeover price. Our results demonstrate that the timing and content of financial media coverage may be biased by firms seeking to manipulate their stock price.
Tone Management Huang, Xuan; Teoh, Siew Hong; Zhang, Yinglei
The Accounting review,
05/2014, Letnik:
89, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We investigate whether and when firms manage the tone of words in earnings press releases, and how investors react to tone management. We estimate abnormal positive tone, ABTONE, as a measure of tone ...management from residuals of a tone model that controls for firm quantitative fundamentals such as performance, risk, and complexity. We find that ABTONE predicts negative future earnings and cash flows, is positively associated with upward perception management events, such as, just meeting/beating thresholds, future earnings restatements, SEO, and M&A, and is negatively associated with a downward perception management event, stock option grants. ABTONE has a positive stock return effect at the earnings announcement and a delayed negative reaction in the one and two quarters afterward. Balance sheet constrained firms and older firms are more likely to employ tone management over accruals management. Overall, the evidence is consistent with managers using strategic tone management to mislead investors about firm fundamentals.
Earnings press releases are the primary mechanism by which managers announce quarterly earnings and make other concurrent disclosures to investors and other stakeholders. A largely unexplored element ...of earnings press releases is the language that managers use throughout the press release, which we argue provides a unifying framework for these disclosures and an opportunity for managers to signal, both directly and more subtly, their expectations about future performance. We analyze the full texts of approximately 23,000 earnings press releases issued between 1998 and 2003 and examine whether the language used in these earnings press releases provides a signal about expected future firm performance and whether the market responds to this signal. Using categories derived from linguistic theory, we count words characterized as optimistic and pessimistic and construct a measure of managers' net optimistic language for each earnings press release. We find that this measure is positively associated with future return on assets and generates a significant market response in a short window around the earnings announcement date. We include in our models the earnings surprise as well as other quantifiable, concurrent disclosures identified in prior research as associated with the market's reaction to earnings press releases. Our results support the premise that earnings press release language provides a signal regarding managers' future earnings expectations to the market and that the market responds to this signal. We interpret our evidence to suggest that managers use language in earnings press releases to communicate credible information about expected future firm performance. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Science communication is a powerful supplier of scientific knowledge for the public (see Harmatiy 2021; Kueffer and Larson 2014). While popularization discourse has been explored in depth (see for ...example, Calsamiglia and Van Dijk 2004; Garzone 2014, 2020; Gotti 2014; Luzón 2013; Myers 2003), the ways specific linguistic strategies impact content and the communication of science still need to be fully explored. The general purpose of this study is to explore how titles of scientific articles are transformed to be turned into headlines of press releases. Specifically, it aims first to identify recurring discursive patterns in the adaptation of titles in scientific discourse to headlines in science communication. Second, it investigates whether these patterns have an impact on the way scientific knowledge is presented. Two matching corpora were used: one of titles of research articles and one of headlines of research-based university press releases. The unique feature of these two corpora is that they have a bijective relation, so that each of the 210 titles of scientific papers matches one of the 210 university press release headlines. Results show that many linguistic strategies in science journalism are the mirror image of scientific discourse: three strategies were identified that contribute to two different representations of science, as an ongoing process in academic titles and a conclusive fact in press releases’ headlines: 1) the validity-endorsement strategy; 2) the V-ing construction; 3) the opposition between unspecified association vs. explicit relation.
Media coverage of earnings is consequential for firms. As such, firms work hard to ensure their performance beats analyst estimates to avoid negative coverage. However, the relationship between ...performance and coverage might not be as straightforward as firms assume because media coverage is a socially constructed process that reflects journalists’ social and cognitive biases while producing newsworthy content. With this in mind, we unpack the concept of newsworthiness and develop theory regarding how the media targets, in the earnings context, deviance that is socially significant for stakeholders or attaches a deviance frame to news of social significance. In doing so, we examine how the media’s pursuit of newsworthiness shapes the relationship between critical characteristics of earnings announcements—including the firm’s earnings performance, its press releases surrounding earnings, its prior reputation, and its prior media visibility—and media volume and tone. The results of our empirical tests are broadly consistent with our theorizing. Our theory and findings contribute to research on earnings, media coverage, and social evaluations.
Firm disclosures often reach only a portion of investors, which results in information asymmetry among investors and, therefore, lower market liquidity. This issue is particularly salient for firms ...that are not highly visible, as they tend not to receive broad news dissemination via traditional intermediaries, such as the press. This paper examines whether firms can reduce information asymmetry by more broadly disseminating their news. To isolate the impact of dissemination, we focus our analysis on firms' use of Twitter and exploit the 140-character message restriction. Specifically, using a sample of technology firms, we examine the impact of using Twitter to send market participants links to press releases that are provided via traditional disclosure methods. We find this additional dissemination of firm-initiated news via Twitter is associated with lower abnormal bid-ask spreads and greater abnormal depths, consistent with a reduction in information asymmetry. Moreover, this result holds mainly for firms that are not highly visible, consistent with them being in greater need of this additional dissemination channel. We also examine the impact of dissemination on a volume-based measure of liquidity, and find that dissemination is positively associated with liquidity.
This paper questions findings indicating that when organizations are hard to classify they will suffer in terms of external evaluations. Here, I suggest this depends on the audience evaluating the ...organization. Audiences that are "market-takers" consume or evaluate goods and use market labels to find and assess organizations; for them, ambiguous labels make organizations unclear and therefore less appealing. "Market-makers" are interested in redefining the market structure, and as a result, this type of audience sees the same ambiguity as flexible and therefore more appealing. I tested these ideas in a longitudinal analysis of U.S. software organizations between 1990 and 2002. As predicted, organizations that claim ambiguous labels are less appealing to consumers, an audience of market-takers, but more appealing to venture capitalists, who are market-makers. Further, when labels are ambiguous, aversion to or preference for ambiguity arises from the label itself. Identifying with multiple ambiguous labels does not make an organization even less appealing to a consumer or more appealing to a venture capitalist. Finally, all types of venture capitalists are not alike in how they react to a label's ambiguity. Independent venture capitalists act as market-makers and prefer organizations with ambiguous labels, while corporate venture capitalists act as market-takers and avoid them.
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