Did we make it to the news? Effects of actual and perceived media coverage on media orientations of communication professionals

The aim of this study is to assess the mass media orientations of communication professionals: Is past media coverage for their organization related to the way communication professionals currently evaluate the importance of the media for their organizations? Following the debates on mediatization and reciprocal effects of media coverage, we assume that the amount and the tone of media coverage matter for the media orientations of communication professionals. In our analysis, we discern between actual and perceived characteristics of media attention. A quantitative content analysis was used to analyze the actual characteristics of media coverage for public and for-profit organizations as well as non-profit organizations. A survey was conducted to analyze the perceptions of coverage and mass media orientations of Dutch communication professionals working for those organizations. For public organizations, actual media favorability and perceived visibility turned out to be important predictors of the media orientation ‘attention seeking’. The organizations were rather homogeneous in their relations between actual and perceived media coverage and the media orientation ‘strategic impact’. This orientation was best predicted by volume of coverage, the substantiality of issues that were covered, and perceived visibility. Our results point at the importance of taking perceptive data into account when predicting media orientations.