Custom Publishing: How Companies and other Organizations use quasi-journalistic coverage to shape the public discourse

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Koch
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453706826

Today, almost all large companies and organizations, such as NGOs, trade unions or associations, publish their own media. In German-speaking countries organizational media, such as customer and member magazines, are collectively referred to as “Corporate Publishing” and resemble the most widespread publications in the print sector. Corporate Publishing publications are blurring the boundaries between journalism and public relations (PR). On the one hand, the publications function as PR instruments that communicate the particular interests of the organization, maintain stakeholder relationships and aim at increasing sales. On the other hand, their thematic, stylistic and visual design corresponds to journalistic publications that provide information and entertainment and of which recipients expect critical, independent and objective reporting. Although this boundary blurring is by no means new, little is known about the content of these quasi-journalistic publications and the editors that produce them. This is all the more astonishing because the publications belong to the standard repertoire of strategic organizational communication and their reach is growing immensely. Thus, there is a wide variety of organizational publications that could significantly influence public discourse in journalistic disguise, to which researchers have not paid enough attention to. To close this gap, this grant application aims at examining organizational publications from two perspectives. On the one hand, a quantitative survey (sub-study I) will examine the producers of these publications: Who are the editors behind the publications, how do they work and which self-image do they base their work on? How independent are they in their reporting of the influences of the respective organization, which professional ethical standards do they follow and to what extent do they deliberately try to influence political decisions? In a second step, a quantitative content analysis (sub-study II) will examine the publications on a content level: Which topics cover the various publications and to what extent do they resemble journalistic media? In addition, we question in particular, to what extent the magazines set certain topics and how balanced and independent they report about them. Ultimately, the aim of both studies is to answer to what extent corporate publishing publications exert political and societal influence.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants