Impact of Pandemic Communication on Brand-specific Outcomes: Testing the Moderating Role of Brand Attitude and Product Category

The unprecedented crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a shift in consumers’ attitude, behaviour and purchasing habits across the globe. While brands make all the efforts to cope up, they also need to devise strategies to survive in the post-crisis situation. It is in the light of this disturbed equilibrium that the present study is undertaken. Using structural equation modeling (SEM)-based analysis of 240 consumer responses, the article analyses the direct influence of pandemic communication and the indirect impact of brand attitude and product category on three specific brand outcomes, viz. image, trust and loyalty. The findings reveal a positive and significant impact of communication during pandemic on all three brand outcomes under investigation. Further, though the results do not divulge the moderating role of brand attitude, they establish the impact of pandemic communication on brand loyalty for non-essential product category. On the basis of the findings, the study yields useful suggestions that can be implemented by brands to hold themselves more strongly in the post-pandemic future.

Does Online Dating Promotion Vary Across Cultures? A Cross-cultural Analysis of Homepage Advertisements of Online Dating Services in 51 Countries

This study extends our understanding of the influence of culture on advertising within the novel context of online dating. People around the world have come to depend on online dating services (ODSs) to participate in the dating process. Since the norms and expectations of dating are influenced by a country’s cultural values, we expect ODSs to adapt their advertising messages to be congruent with these values. Using the Pollay–Hofstede framework, we examine the relationship between advertising appeals used by 1,003 ODSs from 51 countries and the cultural dimensions of these countries. Results showed that ODS advertisements appealed to people’s need for relationship, friendship, entertainment, sex, status, design and identity. The use of these appeals was congruent with only the individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance cultural dimensions. Based on these results, we argue that ODS’s overwhelming use of culturally incongruent advertising messages can lead to a global transformation and homogenisation of the dating culture.

Trends in Media Coverage and Information Diffusion Over Time: The Case of the American Earth Systems Research Centre Biosphere 2

This study examined research centre Biosphere 2 (B2) coverage by US newspapers between 1984 (as stories of conception before construction emerged) and 2019 (at the time this research was conducted) in order to uncover news diffusion relative to B2 in public media across historic eras and amid shifts in stakeholders over time. The analysis focussed on how a scientific institution and its innovative activities implied values, impacted the meaning-making of its project, as well as influenced the amount of information shared across sources (i.e., regional, metropole or elite) and media scale (i.e., local, regional, national outlets). This analysis identified nine eras delimited by scientific or organisational events. The findings emerging from this study can inform understandings of media behaviour around other scientific institutions and experiments.

Sentiment Analysis of Users’ Comments on Indian Hindi News Channels Using Mozdeh: An Evaluation Based on YouTube Videos

Sentiment analysis is the channel to pick out the text from the social media dataset to inquire about the positive and negative opinions of the statement and its subjective and objectiveness. The purpose of the study is to manifest the sentiment of the text posted in five Hindi news channels, that is, AajTak, ABP News, India TV, NDTV India and Republic Bharat on YouTube are investigated by adopting the Mozdeh software to highlight the sequential temperament of the viewers by evaluating the positive and negative sentiments. The present study is subsequently limited to the data being extracted and evaluated by the software Mozdeh. The sentiments of each Hindi news channel are analysed along with the top word frequencies and displaying the time-series graph. The investigation presents that the channel with maximum average positive average negative sentiment belongs to India TV and the female category was in the peak compared to male altogether but the unidentified gender was the highest. During the time series analysis, the year 2020 was seen to be the most productive year since all the spikes were precisely detected. The audience of these channels turns out to be more attentive towards the political and entertainment news world. The study also highlights the tendency and interest of the common audiences to watch the news which dedicates that people are usually unsatisfied with the content being displayed in the videos and the common concentration is mostly based on the political news.

Analysis of Media Bias—Glenn Beck TV Shows: A Content Analysis

This study provides an overview of the media’s role in shaping public discourse and belief through framing news stories in a biased perspective and setting an agenda that is in keeping with the interests of the corporate and institutional funders of the media apparatus. Support for such an analysis is provided by a literature review that covers many critical aspects of news framing, agenda setting and cultivation theory, especially with respect to the emergence of a new ‘network society’. The ‘content analysis’ approach is utilised to search for biased content via the use of coders and decoders in some 140 randomly selected sampled links of the ‘Glenn Beck’ show during the two periods of time from 1 January 2010 to 30 June 2010, and from 1 January 2011 to 30 June 2011, each of these periods consisting of 70 samples. The results ultimately show that the programme almost unilaterally provides supportive views of moral conservative values, and slight negative portrayals of Muslims. The programme presents critical views of President Obama and his policies, although the finding in opposing Obama’s policies is not statistically significant. The significance of these findings is discussed within the larger context of media bias and its influence on political reality, as well as public discourse and belief; although the study and hence, the findings suggesting ‘bias’ do not represent the entire media industry representing conservative values.

The Afterlife of Breast Cancer: Exploring the Digital Performativity of Post-Treatment Patienthood

This article looks at the practices of digital performativity of bodies-in-remission on Instagram to detail the affective and temporal experience of post-treatment patienthood. To explore these performativities, I use the images and narratives of the post-treatment breast-cancer body to have a conversation about the vicarious ‘re-experience’ of the malady—now in abeyance—through the discursive register of fear and the clinical haunting of the everyday in trying to offset the side-effects of the treatment regimes. I further argue that these techno-digital enactments of post-treatment patienthood co-emerge through complex ‘intra-actions’ of and within entanglements of materialities, networks, discourses, affect, and multiple registers of techno-social mediation that shape and constrict them. Accordingly, this article is an effort to make sense of how people ‘memorise’ chronic illness and prolonged suffering—especially when it impacts key sources of their gender identity—through negotiations with the temporal-discursive processes of networked communications.

Instagram: A Gimmick or a Serious Reputation Builder in the Airline Business?

The purpose of the research was to shed light on the interrelatedness between Instagram and corporate reputation, on the one hand, and customer service expectations, on the other. A conceptual model was proposed to be tested in the context of the civil aviation economy. A national flagship airline company was chosen in which to conduct the research. An online questionnaire was made available, and 283 responses were collected. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses derived from the literature. The novelty of the work is in the scarce research found when scrutinising the literature on possible links between Instagram and airline corporate reputation. The study found a positive correlation between social media usage and corporate reputation in the airline sector. Future research needs to replicate this study across other airlines to ascertain the external validity of the current study and its potential for extrapolation.

Forget-me-not? Using Immersive Technologies in Brand-building Communication Processes: An Exploratory Study in the Mexican Context

New immersive technologies (NITs) can be an ally or a rival when it comes to brand relationships. Given the multiplicity of options, marketers need to understand their customers also as audiences seeking experiences. However, such experiences need to exist within a company’s digital ecosystem. This study presents an analysis of six companies that have used NITs to varying degrees. We propose a framework in which more cases of NIT usage in companies can be studied. We conclude that the more the initiatives come from a company’s top-management overall ecosystem transformation, the more likely NIT adoption will fit into a general strategy for a brand-strengthening process and the more it will be effective. This exploratory analysis opens up a path for building new frameworks to measure a company’s degree of involvement with and usage of interactive technologies.

The Dragonfly Effect: Analysis of the Social Media Women’s Empowerment Campaign

Social media can advocate for social causes and catalyse audience support. To better understand the role of social media in advocacy communication, this article explores how advocates utilised Facebook to advocate for the ‘Taa Marbuta’ women empowerment campaign in Egypt. Our research draws on the dragonfly effect model and muted group theory as theoretical and analytical frameworks. In-depth interviews are conducted with advocates from all campaign partners who were directly involved in planning and managing the campaign. Following the dragonfly effect model, findings show that the campaign has a clear goal and uses various message strategies and pop culture for grabbing audience attention and generating audience engagement; however, there is no clear call for action. Thematic analysis also reveals two emerging themes: customisation of women empowerment communication and a supportive community of women empowerment that can stimulate societal debates necessary for social change. This study contends that including men can mitigate the muted effect on women in a male-dominant society and paves the way towards women’s empowerment. Overall, this study shows how social media helps make the ‘Taa Marbuta’ campaign an icon of women empowerment.