Media Agenda Setting and Corporate Reputation in France.

This paper considers the agenda setting capacities of the French media with regards to corporate reputation as well as the degree of heterogeneity in French business news. We use public opinion data gathered in late 2004 and content analytic data to test a variant of the basic agenda setting hypothesis. We find that the number of mentions of French firms in the French press is positively related with the ease with which the public can form an opinion (in other words, assign a reputation) regarding that firm. We also find that a firm's characteristics, specifically, the existence of a retail identity is related to the ease with which opinions are formed regarding a company. Finally, we uncover evidence regarding the similarity of business news reporting across business and mainstream newspapers. This indicator of content homogeneity might have important civic implications in France and beyond. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]