Effects of media coverage on threshold dynamics of a stochastic avian-human influenza epidemic system with distributed delay and logarithmic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process

This study investigates the effect of news media coverage on trading activity in, and the liquidity of, target firms’ shares around acquisition announcements. We use the number of articles published in four of the UK's main newspapers as a proxy for media coverage. Our dataset includes 350 UK domestic acquisition deals between 1996 and 2014. The results of our analysis suggest that media coverage is positively associated with target firms’ trading activity and stock liquidity. This is consistent with the media playing a key role in mitigating information asymmetry in the financial markets. This study contributes to the literature on stock market reactions to acquisition announcements by investigating the effect of media coverage on trading activity and stock liquidity beyond the price run-up, and by providing additional insights into the UK market which traditionally attracts less attention than the US market.

This paper evaluates positive and negative media coverage of online local budget transparency (OLBT) and its impact on budget transparency in Croatian local administrative units in 2018. Using multinomial logistic regression, research confirmed a strong impact of media coverage on budget transparency. Positive media coverage of OLBT increases the probability that local administrative units will attain a higher level of transparency, while negative media coverage is accompanied by a higher likelihood of local units’ retention in the lower transparency range. The implications of these findings are clearly emphasized through a deeper understanding of the role of the media in public sector economics, precisely in the context of budget transparency. This study contributes to public sector literature by identifying the effects of positive and negative media coverage on budget transparency.

The effect of media coverage on threshold dynamics for a stochastic SIS epidemic model

With the development of the media and the capital market in recent years, a new research trend emerges in the financial studies, and more and more scholars focus on the effect of media coverage on stock prices. In order to grasp the development of research related media coverage and asset pricing more, this paper systematically reviews the literature of media coverage and asset pricing at home and abroad, summarizes the analytical framework of the existing research, and comprehensively comments on the research of the effect of media coverage on asset pricing from four perspectives of information asymmetry, behavioral finance, corporate governance premium and media coverage bias. Then it proposes further research ideas and suggestions.

Does media spotlight really burn innovation? Evidence from China

Memory and media coverage effect on an HIV/AIDS epidemic model with treatment

Media coverage, as an important part of the external corporate governance mechanism, plays an important guiding role in corporate behavior patterns and public opinion. Taking A-share listed companies of Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2017 as research examples, this paper analyzed how media coverage and political connections exert influence on corporate risk in an empirical study approach. This paper makes the following conclusions. First, the media, as information medium and external participant of the company, significantly lower the listed company’s corporate risk through closed media coverage. Second, the closer connection a company has with government, the higher corporate risk it encounters and, in the meantime, less effect of media coverage’s aversion effect towards corporate risk. Third, based on a further research on the nature of company’s property rights, this paper revealed that in state-owned companies, close political connections weaken much more media coverage’s aversion effect towards corporate risk than that in private companies.

BackgroundSmartphone apps are increasingly used for health-related behaviour change and people discover apps through different sources. However, it is unclear whether users differ by mode of app discovery. Drink Less is an alcohol reduction app that received national media coverage in the UK caused by celebrity influence (a male TV and radio national broadcaster, aged 51). Our aim was to compare users who discovered the app before and after this coverage.MethodsA natural experiment assessing the impact of media coverage of Drink Less on users’ socio-demographic and drinking characteristics, app engagement levels, and extent of alcohol reduction. The study period was from 17th May 2017 to 23rd January 2019, with media coverage starting on 21st August 2018. Users were 18 years or over, based in the UK and interested in drinking less. Interrupted time series analyses using Generalised Additive Mixed Models were conducted for each outcome variable aggregated at the weekly level.ResultsIn 66 weeks prior to the media coverage, 8617 users downloaded the app and 18,959 in 23 weeks afterwards. There was a significant step-level increase in users’ mean age (B = 8.17, p < .001) and a decrease in the percentage of female users (B = -27.71, p < .001), though these effects dissipated non-linearly over time. No effect of media coverage was detected on employment type or on the percentage of at-risk drinkers, though the mean Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score was lower after the media coverage (B = -1.43, p = .031). There was a step-level increase in app engagement – number of sessions (B = 3.45, p = .038) and number of days used (B = 2.30, p = .005) – which continued to increase over time following quadratic trends.ConclusionsCelebrity influence leading to national media coverage in the UK of the Drink Less app was associated with more people downloading the app who were male, older and engaged with the app; and did not appear to impact employment inequality.

This paper explores the relationship between media coverage and stock returns using monthly data of news reports from major Chinese newspapers. We find that firms with higher media coverage in the current month have higher sustainable stock returns in the following months over a one-year period compared with those with lower media coverage, which means that media coverage has a more significant and positive influence on sustainable stock returns in the markets, dominated by individual/immature investors. These results are largely robust to various robustness checks. Further empirical results demonstrate that in the Chinese stock market, a higher level of media coverage might cause higher sustained investor attention, which may drive up the buying pressure and thus lead to higher sustainable stock returns in the following year. Our results show that the effect of media coverage on stock returns depends on the characteristics of investors.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship among negative media coverage, law environment and tunneling of controlling shareholders. Design/methodology/approach – Under the Chinese especial institutional background, this paper empirically test the relationship among negative media coverage, law environment and tunneling of controlling shareholders with the sample of 2009-2011 Chinese listed companies. Findings – The empirical results demonstrate that negative media coverage can reduce tunneling of controlling shareholder, and compared with state-owned listed companies, negative media coverage have a greater effect on tunneling in non-state-owned listed companies; and negative media coverage have a greater effect on tunneling in areas with better law environment. Further study shows that the reduction of controlling shareholder’s behavior of tunneling can improve company performance, and the improvement is more significant in non-state-owned listed companies and areas with better law environment. The research results indicate that media coverage play a very active role on restraining stakeholder’s behavior and perfecting corporate governing. Originality/value – First, this paper will study of tunneling from the perspective of media coverage for the first time. Second, this paper further analyzes how the decrease of tunneling improves corporate performance following the research of how media coverage influence tunneling. Third, this study enrich literatures about the effects of media coverage on corporate governance in Chinese capital market.

The effect of media coverage on disciplining firms’ pollution behaviors: Evidence from Chinese heavy polluting listed companies

Media coverage can impact support for health policies and, ultimately, compliance with those policies. Prior research found consistent, high support for Tobacco 21 policies, which raise the minimum legal age of tobacco purchase to 21, among adults and nonsmoking youth. However, a recent study found support (i.e., agreement with the statement: “The legal age to buy tobacco cigarettes should be increased from 18 to 21”) among 13–20-year-old smokers increased from 2014 until mid-2016 and then declined steadily through mid-2017. To assess whether media coverage could be related to young smokers’ changing support, we conducted an exploratory content analysis to identify texts about Tobacco 21 in a large corpus of tobacco texts (N = 135,691) published in four popular media sources from 2014 to 2017. For this content analysis, we developed a novel methodological approach that combined supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and could be useful in other areas of communication research. We found that the prevalence of Tobacco 21 media coverage and Tobacco 21 support among young smokers exhibited similar temporal patterns for much of the study period. These findings highlight the need for continued research into the effects of media coverage on Tobacco 21 support among young smokers, a group that must comply with Tobacco 21 policies in order to ensure maximum effectiveness. This research is of particular utility following the 2019 passage of a federal Tobacco 21 regulation, as the public health impact of this regulation could be limited by low public support, and thus low rates of policy compliance.

This paper evaluates the impact of COVID-19 media coverage in mitigating its spread in China during the early phase of the pandemic. We construct a provincial-level dataset on COVID-19 and link it with population mobility data, among other control variables, to estimate how media coverage mitigates the spread of COVID-19. Seemingly unrelated regressions are used to examine the simultaneous impact of media coverage on the number of new cases and close contacts. The results show that the effect of media coverage on COVID-19 transmission in China had an inverse-U curvature and was mediated by within- and across-province population mobility. Our simulation results indicate that COVID-19 media coverage in China was associated with a potential reduction of 394,000 cases and 1.4 million close contacts during January 19 and February 29, 2020. Our results also provide strong support for the use of contact tracing in mitigating COVID-19 transmission.

A series of recent and serious food safety incidents have generated a national debate over the significant costs that they impose on various stakeholders - consumers, industry, or the government. This paper examines the impact of media coverage of food safety and defense issues on consumer confidence in food safety, and measures the response of stock prices of food companies to changes in consumer confidence. Results show that, increases in media coverage have a negative impact on consumer confidence, and that decreases in the levels of consumer confidence on food safety have a negative impact on stock prices of food companies, in particular for the larger firms. These findings confirm that the financial performance of food the industry is negatively affected by category-specific food safety events, and the effects of media coverage on consumer confidence in the safety of the food system.

Post-pandemic outbound travel intentions and preparations of Chinese residents: The effects of media coverage and risk perception