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Brand as a cognitive mediator: investigating the effect of media brands as a structural feature of textual news messages

Salla-Maaria Laaksonen (Department of Social Research, Media and Communication Studies, Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki, Finland and Consumer Society Research Centre, Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki, Finland)
Alessio Falco (Department of Social Psychology, Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki, Finland)
Mikko Salminen (Department of Information and Service Management School of Business, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland and Gamification Group, Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland)
Pekka Aula (Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland and Department of Social Research, Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki, Finland)
Niklas Ravaja (Faculty of Medicine, Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki, Finland and Department of Information and Service Management, School of Business, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland)

Journal of Product & Brand Management

ISSN: 1061-0421

Article publication date: 8 March 2019

Issue publication date: 14 March 2019

648

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.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with support from the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, in connection with the research project Media2. The authors wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for all the insightful comments.

Citation

Laaksonen, S.-M., Falco, A., Salminen, M., Aula, P. and Ravaja, N. (2019), "Brand as a cognitive mediator: investigating the effect of media brands as a structural feature of textual news messages", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-01-2017-1394

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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