Custom Publishing: How Companies and other Organizations use quasi-journalistic coverage to shape the public discourse
Final Report Abstract
The term “Corporate Publishing” refers to publications issued by companies and other organizations that resemble journalistic publications. These serve as tools for strategic organizational communication and aim to communicate the organization’s own interests, maintain relationships with stakeholders, legitimize the organization, or simply promote product sales. They are guided by journalistic standards in terms of topic selection, visual design, and content presentation, and recipients expect critical, independent, and balanced reporting. This creates a blurring of boundaries between journalistic and organizational (and thus strategic) content, which is highly problematic. Although these publications have been used in corporate communication for decades, they have received little attention from researchers. This project has addressed this gap by first examining the editors (we refer to them as “brand journalists”) responsible for the content through a quantitative survey. Second, it investigated the content of Corporate Publishing publications through a quantitative content analysis. Regarding the brand journalists, our findings indicate that the self-concept of their role resembles journalistic role concepts in many aspects. Both aim to inform, provide orientation, and explain facts. However, a significant difference lies in the criticism and control of economics and politics: brand journalists attribute less importance to this function compared to journalists. In terms of ethical decisions, there are also minimal differences: consistent with journalists, the surveyed brand journalists mostly believe that ethical principles are universally applicable and should apply even in exceptional situations. Brand journalists perceive sometimes conflicting expectations of their professional role, linked both to journalism and to the field of PR. These can cause stress and/or reduced job satisfaction. The content analysis shows that a large portion of the articles follows traditional journalistic news formats such as reports and announcements. The publications most frequently address health, economics, and politics, demonstrating a high orientation towards journalism. However, there are also frequent references to the organization itself, the underlying industry, or the products and services. The reporting is usually positive and very rarely critical.
Publications
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Is a Brand Journalist Just Another Journalist? Examining Differences and Similarities in the Self-Perceptions of Their Professional Roles and Ethical Orientations. Journalism Studies, 25(6), 602-621.
Viererbl, Benno & Koch, Thomas
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Role Conflicts in Brand Journalism: Amid Organizational Goals, Audience Demands, and Journalistic Values. EUPRERA Annual Congress. 11-14. September 2024 in Bucharest, Romania.
Viererbl, B. & Koch, T.
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Role conflicts in brand journalism: Amid organizational goals, audience demands, and journalistic values. Journalism, 27(2), 330-348.
Viererbl, Benno & Koch, Thomas
