Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, Alessio Falco, Mikko Salminen, Pekka Aula and Niklas Ravaja
This study investigates how media brand knowledge, defined as a structural feature of the message, influences emotional and attentional responses to, and memory of, news messages.
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates how media brand knowledge, defined as a structural feature of the message, influences emotional and attentional responses to, and memory of, news messages.
Design/methodology/approach
Self-reports, facial electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography were used as indices of emotional valence, arousal and attention in response to 42 news messages, which varied along the valence and involvement dimensions and were framed with different media brands varying along the familiarity and credibility dimensions.
Findings
Compared to the no-brand condition, news framed with brands elicited more attention. The memory tests indicated that strong media brands override the effect of involvement in information encoding, whereas details of news presented with Facebook were not well encoded. However, the headlines of news framed with Facebook were well retrieved. In addition, negative and high-involvement news elicited higher arousal ratings and corrugator EMG activity. News framed with familiar and high-credibility brands elicited higher arousal ratings.
Research limitations/implications
Relevant for both brand managers and audiences, the findings show that building credibility and familiarity both work as brand attributes to differentiate media brands and influence information processing.
Originality/value
The results highlight the importance of media brands in news reading: as a structural feature, the brand is used as a proxy to process the message content. The study contributes by investigating how the type of source influences the reception and encoding of the mediated information; by investigating the emotional effects of brands; and by confirming previous findings in media psychology literature.
Details
Keywords
Essi Pöyry and Salla-Maaria Laaksonen
In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might…
Abstract
Purpose
In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might, consequently, target the brand with critical, negative or even aggressive actions. This paper aims to study the triggers and strategies of consumers’ antibrand actions given in response to brand activism.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative content analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to study consumer responses directed at a chocolate brand’s campaign that advocated civilized online conversions and opposed hate speech, a politically heated topic. In total, 1,615 messages were collected from social media platforms.
Findings
Field infringement, political accusations and questioned impact of the campaign triggered consumers to turn against the campaign. Strategies to undermine it included boycotting, discrediting the brand and trapping. Trapping – creatively using technological affordances to create harm to the brand – was typically triggered by political associations.
Research limitations/implications
Findings relate to the critical responses regarding one campaign only.
Practical implications
By understanding the political discussion around the chosen cause, including the opponents’ typical triggers and strategies, brand activism can more credibly advocate for contested social causes and communicate brand values.
Originality/value
Political antibrand actions are distinct from the previously identified functional and ethical antibrand actions, and they are noninstrumental by nature. Practices that are native to social media are central to political antibrand actions, and social media platforms contribute to how such disappointment is articulated and acted upon.