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The performance of corporations in sustainable development is not only a concern of investors, but has also captured ever-increasing attention from consumers. However, the evidence on how these good practices would ultimately benefit brands economically remains insufficient. This study tests the causal effect between corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance, media coverage, and brand value to reveal the underlying mechanisms of how consumers would react to high ESG performance.

This study uses panel data regression analysis with a sample of Chinese A-share non-financial listed companies from 2010 to 2021. ESG performance, brand value, and media coverage are assessed with Huazheng ESG Rating, the rankings from the China’s 500 Most Valuable Brands' list published by the World Brand Lab, and media index compiled by the Chinese Research Data Services Platform (CNRDS) respectively.

This research confirmed that ESG performance positively impacted brand value in terms of profitability, and that media coverage played a role as a megaphone in this relationship. Large-scale corporates, compared to small ones, benefited more from good ESG ratings due to increased media coverage.

The findings provide evidence of the megaphone effect of media coverage on the relationship between firms’ ESG engagements and brand value in the product market, which has extended the knowledge of media’s monitoring role in the financial market. And this megaphone effect is strengthened by firm size in which larger firms have spotlight effect in draw public attention due to higher expectations in terms of social responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of media representation on the mental health of Australians of African descent during the COVID-19 pandemic. By analysing the media coverage of COVID-19 restriction breaches, particularly focusing on individuals from African backgrounds, the study aims to shed light on how racially charged narratives can contribute to emotional distress and exacerbate feelings of alienation within these communities. The findings highlight the detrimental effects of such portrayals, emphasising the need for more responsible and inclusive media reporting to safeguard the mental well-being of culturally and linguistically diverse populations.

The study employed media content analysis to explore representations of Australians of African origin versus the broader Anglo–Australian population during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on racial identity’s impact on news coverage of COVID-19 restriction breaches. Researchers classified and distilled extensive textual content, using a diverse sample from various ethnic-racial backgrounds, with an emphasis on African Australians within the CALD community. Data analysis was conducted using NVivo (version 12) software, following an inductive approach.

The findings underscore the consistent portrayal of people from African communities as outsiders and the racial profiling they experience in media coverage of significant issues like COVID-19.

There is very limited research that examines the impact of media coverage on African migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper investigates the news coverage of research documents with the top Altmetric attention score (AAS) using a descriptive and explorative approach.

A dataset comprising 1,000 articles with high AAS was retrieved from Altmetric.com. The DOIs of these articles were then used to retrieve citation data from Dimensions. Data collection was finalized on February 11, 2024, and separate Excel files were merged using SPSS. The research included subject analysis and conducted correlation and Mann–Whitney U statistical tests.

The study reveals that the highest number of articles with high AAS were published in 2020. News post correlation with citation count is stronger than with AAS score. From the top AAS documents, titles of those with the highest news post counts include public concern keywords, and their subjects were primarily biomedical and clinical sciences. While no significant difference exists between multidisciplinary and specialty journal news posts, there is an increase in the variety of news sources in 2020 and 2021. Documents on biomedical and clinical sciences receive the most attention primarily from US-based news outlets, and many of the news outlets covering top AAS documents do not have specific subject orientations.

Researchers and journal editors should prioritize factors influencing research news coverage, including subjects, writing styles, and publication sources. Science writers should expand their coverage to include academic publications from subject areas beyond biomedical and clinical sciences. They can also consider diverse publication sources, such as preprints.

This study offers insights into the news coverage of top social-attention academic articles and is among the first to analyze the news coverage of academic publications.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2022-0666

This study aims to investigate whether Brazilian companies have increased their reporting on biodiversity within the past decade and whether reporting practices are linked to the government's stance on environmental protection, media coverage and industry biodiversity risk.

Using content analysis and ordinary least squares regression models, the authors examine sustainability reports from Brazilian listed and non-listed companies from 2010 to 2020.

This study’s empirical analysis indicates that companies have decreased their reporting on biodiversity over the decade. Findings suggest that biodiversity reporting is associated with the level of scrutiny from external constituents, such as industry biodiversity and the president's own public policy agenda and partially by media coverage.

The literature seems to lack an understanding of how political factors may drive social and environmental reporting practices, especially biodiversity reporting. This study addresses this issue by examining the relationship between the government's stance on environmental protection. By focusing on biodiversity reporting in an emerging country like Brazil, this study also generates insights into a highly impactful yet under-researched context.

This study explores the impact mechanism of corporate digital transformation (CDT) on the quality of accounting information.

Samples of A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2020 are used as a research sample. The empirical analysis is based on the ordinary least squares regression model, and mediation and moderation effect models were used in further analysis.

This study finds that CDT enhances accounting information quality by alleviating the agency problem. This positive effect is more significant among firms that exhibit less media coverage, have low industry competition and are not subject to cyber-attack.

This study extends the economic consequences of CDT and enriches the literature on the factors that affect accounting information quality. Further, this study's findings guide the government to actively promote CDT, facilitate the digital upgrading of industries and improve accounting information quality and efficiency in capital markets.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining the influence of national media environments on the economic consequences of CSR. Drawing on signaling theory, this study distinguishes between two country-level media environments − digital media accessibility and media freedom − of which the prior research has often implied their value in cultivating the stakeholders’ awareness about the firms’ socially responsible behavior, suggesting that they amplify the benefits of CSR actions.

This study conducts multilevel analysis with a sample of 44,222 firm-year observations representing 6,726 companies from 57 countries over the period 2003–2019.

This study finds supportive evidence that CSR is more positively related to financial gains in countries with greater digital media accessibility. This study concludes that digital media accessibility affects a firm’s reputation and legitimacy benefits derived from CSR actions, resulting in better financial performance (FP).

The findings of this paper contribute to the existing literature on the CSR–FP relationship by demonstrating the relevance of considering the media environment to better explain the link between CSR and FP. In doing so, this study enriches our understanding of the importance of the media at macro-level institutions by examining how and why these media environments cultivate a culture of CSR as a strategic tool for firms.

This paper aims to explore the global trends and status of drone journalism through a systematic bibliometric analysis, aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of the field's evolution, impact and interdisciplinary nature.

This study uses established bibliometric tools and frameworks to systematically review scholarly publications related to drone journalism. Using the Dimensions.ai database, a systematic mapping of the intellectual landscape of drone journalism research is conducted. Bibliometrix package of R Studio was used in the study.

The analysis reveals a progressive growth in drone journalism research over the years. Although research output consistently increases, variations in impact, measured by citations and online engagement, are observed. Missing data and contextual factors necessitate careful interpretation, but trends suggest an evolving field with diverse interests and future exploration opportunities. Drone journalism research exhibits interdisciplinary characteristics, with impact varying across different research categories. The distribution of research across various publication types underscores the diversity of scholarly communication channels in the field.

This study acknowledges limitations in its data set, stemming from specific keyword criteria, potentially limiting the comprehensive capture of all drone journalism research.

This study offers valuable insights for researchers, practitioners and policymakers seeking to navigate the dynamic landscape of drone journalism. The understanding of publication patterns, influential authors and interdisciplinary intersections facilitates informed decisions regarding research dissemination and impact maximization.

This research contributes to the evolving field of drone journalism by providing a holistic view of its trends and status. The identification of prolific authors, influential publications and evolving research themes offers valuable context for understanding the multifaceted nature of drone journalism research.

This study aims to investigate the impact of climate risk disclosure by listed companies on the entry of green investors. It seeks to understand how proactive climate risk disclosure can attract green investment and the underlying mechanisms that facilitate this process.

Textual analysis is employed to assess the extent of climate risk disclosure in annual reports. The research constructs indicators for green investor entry and applies regression analysis to examine the relationship between climate risk disclosure and green investment, considering various mediating variables such as positive online news coverage, ESG scores, and corporate reputation.

Green investors are more likely to invest in companies with higher levels of climate risk disclosure. This relationship is robust across different types of firms, with non-state-owned, non-high-tech, large-scale firms, and those in the Eastern region showing a stronger attraction to green investors. Climate risk disclosure promotes green investment through the “signal transmission” mechanism, enhancing corporate reputation and ESG performance.

This paper extends the traditional theory of external incentives for corporate green development to include autonomous incentives through active climate risk disclosure. It provides new insights into the theory of corporate sustainable development and offers practical recommendations for enhancing corporate green development pathways. The study’s comprehensive approach and use of extensive data contribute valuable knowledge to the field of green investment and corporate sustainability.

The rise of the mobile Internet has accumulated much text information in various online financial forums. Such information often contains the emotional attitudes of investors toward financial technology (fintech) platforms, so extracting the sentimental tendency information has great practical value for the development of fintech platforms. Based on the investor sentiment theory, the paper aims to analyze the relevant social media data and test the influence path of online news evaluation on the stock price fluctuation of fintech platforms.

Taking Oriental Fortune as the research object, this paper selects multiple variables such as stock bar popularity, snowball popularity, news popularity and news sentiment scores collected by UQER and combines the sentiment scores of single daily news into a daily sentiment score. Based on the period from November 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, during the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as the background, the authors conduct the Granger causality test based on the vector autoregressive (VAR) model and analyze the relevant evaluation of Oriental Fortune through the empirical model.

The authors' results show that different online evaluations impact the rise and fall of stock prices differently, while news popularity has the most significant impact. Besides, news sentiment scores on share price fluctuation have a relatively substantial influence. These findings indicate that the authoritative news evaluation can strongly guide investors to make relevant investment behavior operations in the information dissemination process, significantly affecting stock prices.

The research findings of this paper have good inspiration and reference values for investors and financial regulators.

Environmental communication has been a profession and a subject of study for decades. Communication currently revolves around the anthropogenic ecological catastrophe, which makes the field’s early self-description as a crisis discipline even more pertinent. How communication is used and perceived significantly impacts how human-caused climate disasters and other environmental and social problems develop and how solutions are offered. The phenomenon of technology has shown significant impacts on how people refer to environmental communication. While bibliometric analysis (BA) helps understand the trends, ChatGPT can generate information related to environmental communication. How are they different from each other? What are the limitations? This study aims to identify the trends and limitations of BA and ChatGPT that are associated with environmental communication.

A qualitative approach is used, which refers to BA using the Biblioshiny software (n = 867) and content analysis on ChatGPT 3.5. It uses a systematic technique for keyword search, namely, environmental and communication, from 2000 to 2022.

There has been a decrease in the scientific production of studies starting in 2021 and 2022, which is believed to be due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ChatGPT provides valuable information but is rather complimentary to BA. ChatGPT is unable to provide statistical information related to environmental communication among Scopus-indexed publications.

This study focuses on the literature published in Scopus from 2000 to 2022. The keyword is limited to “environmental” and “communication.” Besides, the choice of keywords made it specific to the studies involved in the BA, which may not include some other studies if the keywords are not listed.

The originality of the research focuses on the field of environmental communication, its evolution within previous literature and the comparison between BA and the use of ChatGPT for understanding trends and limitations within this field. The text touches upon various aspects, such as the historical context of environmental communication, the impact of technology, the trends in scientific production among Scopus journal papers and the limitations of using ChatGPT compared to BA.