Audience Evaluation Research Articles

Examining the role of individuals’ perceptions of likelihood of sustained commitment in corporate-nonprofit partnership CSR advertisements

Effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) advertising depends on the nature of the partnership and how it is communicated in messages about CSR initiatives. Guided by the Symbolic Sustainability Model (SSM), this study investigates the effects of communication about CSR initiatives comparing differing CSR approaches through a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experiment. After viewing a hypothetical CSR-based advertisement, participants (N = 433) rated their perceptions of initiative effectiveness and attitudes toward the initiative. Compared to a donation-based initiative, a CSR partnership had an indirect, positive effect on audience evaluations, which was mediated by perceptions of the likelihood of the corporation’s sustained commitment to the partnership. The advertising that emphasized a partnership outperformed a donation-focused CSR initiative because participants perceived that the sponsoring corporation was invested in helping the cause for an extended period. The findings indicate that audiences are likely to perceive partnerships and donations positively; however, partnership initiatives may have stronger positive, indirect effects because they may be more likely to signal sustained commitment. The findings support the Symbiotic Sustainability Model (SSM) and demonstrate the efficacy of the SSM for CSR advertising. For practitioners, the findings point to strategies that may be helpful amidst the proliferation of CSR advertising.

Exploring Audience Perceptions of, and Preferences for, Online News Videos

ABSTRACT Journalism professionals and media experts have traditionally used normatively formed criteria to evaluate news quality. Although the digital news media environment has enabled journalists to respond at unprecedented speed to audience consumption patterns, little academic research has systematically addressed how audiences themselves perceive and evaluate news, and even less has focused on audio-visual news. To help fill this research gap, we conducted in-depth group interviews with 22 online news video consumers in the UK to explore their perceptions of online news videos—an increasingly popular news format. Thematic analyses suggest audiences evaluate online news videos using a complex and interwoven set of criteria, which we group under four headings: antecedents of perceptions, emotional impacts, news and editorial values and production characteristics. Some of these criteria can be positioned clearly in relation to the literature on news quality in general, while our documentation of the others contributes new, format-specific knowledge. Our findings offer journalists practical insights into how audiences perceive and evaluate a host of characteristics of online news videos, while our conceptual framework provides a foundation for further academic research on audience evaluations of online news videos, and even audio-visual news more generally.

Audience Evaluation and Analysis of Symphony Performance Effects Based on the Genetic Neural Network Algorithm for the Multilayer Perceptron (GA-MLP-NN).

Traditional symphony performances need to obtain a large amount of data in terms of effect evaluation to ensure the authenticity and stability of the data. In the process of processing the audience evaluation data, there are problems such as large calculation dimensions and low data relevance. Based on this, this article studies the audience evaluation model of teaching quality based on the multilayer perceptron genetic neural network algorithm for the data processing link in the evaluation of the symphony performance effect. Multilayer perceptrons are combined to collect data on the audience's evaluation information; genetic neural network algorithm is used for comprehensive analysis to realize multivariate analysis and objective evaluation of all vocal data of the symphony performance process and effects according to different characteristics and expressions of the audience evaluation. Changes are analyzed and evaluated accurately. The experimental results show that the performance evaluation model of symphony performance based on the multilayer perceptron genetic neural network algorithm can be quantitatively evaluated in real time and is at least higher in accuracy than the results obtained by the mainstream evaluation method of data postprocessing with optimized iterative algorithms as the core 23.1%, its scope of application is also wider, and it has important practical significance in real-time quantitative evaluation of the effect of symphony performance.

Exploring the Effect on the Channel Brand Equity by Audience Evaluation of Public Broadcasting Independency and Their News Credibility: focusing on KBS and MBC

Exploring the Effect on the Channel Brand Equity by Audience Evaluation of Public Broadcasting Independency and Their News Credibility: focusing on KBS and MBC

More than words! How narrative anchoring and enrichment help to balance differentiation and conformity of entrepreneurial products

Entrepreneurs face the challenge of having to conform to gain legitimacy, while at the same time differentiating themselves to gain competitive advantage. We show how entrepreneurs can craft an entrepreneurial narrative to succeed in this task among the user audiences empowered to evaluate their products. Building on theories of categorization, optimal distinctiveness, and cultural entrepreneurship, we propose that entrepreneurs should utilize the narrative's semantic relations with cultural meanings of established products and categories. We measure these semantic relations using machine learning methods for natural language, applied to data on 2901 independent video game proposals compared to 11,651 established games. Our findings reveal that semantically anchoring a product's narrative in the cultural meaning of claimed categories can help to leverage the benefits of differentiation, especially when spanning multiple, atypical categories. When a product focuses on few categories, semantically enriching a narrative with unclaimed categories' cultural meaning makes them more favorable to additional, possibly fragmented audiences that would not have considered them otherwise. Our results point to a key theoretical role of cultural entrepreneurship in shaping audience evaluation of categorization and differentiation by entrepreneurial ventures. It provides guidelines for entrepreneurs for managing the trade-off between differentiation and adherence to established cultural norms.

Compensatory conspicuous communication: Low status increases jargon use

Jargon is commonly used to efficiently communicate and signal group membership. We propose that jargon use also serves a status compensation function. We first define jargon and distinguish it from slang and technical language. Nine studies, including experiments and archival data analyses, test whether low status increases jargon use. Analyses of 64,000 dissertations found that titles produced by authors from lower-status schools included more jargon than titles from higher-status school authors. Experimental manipulations established that low status causally increases jargon use, even in live conversations. Statistical mediation and experimental-causal-chain analyses demonstrated that the low status → jargon effect is driven by increased concern with audience evaluations over conversational clarity. Additional archival and experimental evidence found that acronyms and legalese serve a similar status-compensation function as other forms of jargon (e.g., complex language). These findings establish a new driver of jargon use and demonstrate that communication, like consumption, can be both compensatory and conspicuous.

Auto-Tuned and R-Squared: Quality Evaluations and Organizing Creativity

While navigating the subjective and differing quality evaluations of a range of actors has been identified as a fundamental feature of creative processes, how audience perceptions of quality are navigated in the creative process remains under-theorized. We examine this question through a comparative ethnography of two settings where big data brings audience quality evaluations to the fore—Nashville music production and systems biology cancer research. We find that actors encounter a fundamental tension between the perfection and authenticity of creative outcomes that manifests in two competing standards of quality: the raw, empirically grounded, and authentic versus the technically processed, improved and refined. We show how these standards are negotiated vis-a-vis three different audiences – internal peers, extended community, and external reviewers – and identify implications for the literatures on collective creativity as well as audience evaluations.

Bottled Up or Poured Out: How Product Name Emotions Affect Appeal and Authenticity

Although we know that product names influence audience evaluations of producers and their offerings, mechanisms behind the effect remain undertheorized. We propose that a classic psychological stimulus-and- response process is at play. Emotional contagion – ego’s propensity to experience emotions triggered by contact with alters or objects – suggests that product names that convey certain emotions to the consumers of these products will influence their evaluations. While the process is psychological, social context shapes the strength and valence in the stimulus-and-response relationship. We predict that the anti-mass production ideology and oppositional identity of contemporary craft markets (rooted in avid rejection of pecuniary motivation, template marketing, serial production and the like) produce reverse emotional contagion: Positively charged product names lead to negative evaluations of products and negatively charged ones lead to positive evaluations. We also predict a second-order effect of product name emotionality on appeal by way of perceived product authenticity which itself drives appeal in craft markets: Positive emotionality decreases authenticity perceptions and negative emotionality elevates them. We find empirical support for our conjectures in analyses of the U.S. craft beer industry between 1996 and 2012.

Organizational Event Stigma: Typology, Processes, Stickiness

What do events such as scandals, industrial accidents, activist threats, and mass shootings have in common? They can all potentially stigmatize the organization involved. Despite the prevalence of these stigma-causing events, management research has provided little conceptual work to characterize the nature and dimensions of organizational event stigma. This article takes the perspective of the audience to unpack the audience evaluation process that is triggered by these events, identify critical dimensions for categorizing types of event stigma, and explore the role of the stigmatizers, the stigmatized, and the bystanders in producing what we call “sticky stigmas.” We postulate that volitional and collateral event stigma are likely to lead to stigma stickiness. Our conceptual framework clarifies the antecedents and consequences of the different types of event stigma, highlights the importance of emotional evaluation, and opens avenues for further research into the role of diverse audiences in the stigmatization process.

The Ecological Influences of Categorical Niche Width and Category Contrast on Crowd Evaluation

Self-categorization based on socially constructed classification systems is a key feature in many online communities. Institutionalized categories are often employed by community members to highlight similarity and difference among ideas or products. The objective of this research is to investigate how the categorization process shapes audience evaluation in crowdsourcing communities. Guided by the existing literature on crowdsourcing and the ecology of categories, the current research explores the ecological influences of categorical niche width and category contrast on crowd evaluation. Empirical results from a 6-year panel of 130,806 designs submitted to ongoing contests hosted by Stitchly (a pseudonym) indicated that (a) niche broadness and (b) reduced contrast triggered positive reactions from crowd members. Further, an idea’s average contrast negatively moderated the positive association between categorical niche width and crowd evaluation. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Institutional Categories and Emergent Frames: Categorization Schema and Audience Approval

Audiences categorize firms and their market offerings in an effort to simplify complex information. Firms are positively evaluated when they conform to established categories, whereas non-conformance is punished. While studies identify contingencies to this categorical imperative, they do not compare alternative categorization schemas that result in different sensemaking structures. We compare institutional categories, artefacts of human and temporal sensemaking, with emergent frames, artefacts of algorithmic and atemporal sensemaking. Using patent data from the agricultural industry, we investigate how an invention’s relatedness to high and low valence prototypes (i.e. prototypicality) influences audience approval. We find that inventions closely related to high valence prototypes of institutional categories are negatively evaluated by audiences. For emergent frames, we find that relatedness to both low and high valence prototypes results in positive audience approval, suggesting the latter exposes latent opportunities in the knowledge structure. Yet, these opportunities are not equally available to all firms. Our analyses reveal that inventions related to low valence prototypes are positively evaluated if they come from a generalist than a specialist firm. However, inventions related to high valence prototypes are positively evaluated if they come from a specialist than a generalist, and this effect is stronger if the prototype is identified by emergent frames. With the increasing use of artificial intelligence or machine-based sensemaking in practice, our results shed light on the effects of categorization schema on audience approval. Our study contributes to the literature on categories by exposing that often-opaque properties of the schemas themselves crucially determine audience evaluations.

Mock impoliteness in Saudi Arabia: Evil eye expressive and responsive strategies

The belief in evil eye is an intriguing phenomenon attested in many cultures across the world (Dundes, 1981; Elworthy, 2004; Ross, 2010 among others). According to this belief, a person can bring damage to others and their possessions by (i) staring at them and (ii) wishing them misfortune (Sheldrake, 2003; Ross, 2010). The current study undertakes a sociopragmatic exploration of evil eye as a constructed speech act in Bani Buhair, a small tribe located in the southwestern province of Saudi Arabia. It argues that evil eye is neither a haphazard phenomenon nor a subsidiary form of compliments. In contrast, evil eye is executed following strict protocol. The analysis shows that Buhairi eyers use similes, metaphors, questions and negation among many other strategies in their evil eye performance. In response, Buhairi eyees react with revengeful expressions, religious invocations of misfortune, complaints and/or threats. These strategies diverge in terms of age (young or middle-aged) and reinforce humor, solidarity and identity among Buhairi in-groups. In this paper, it is argued that evil eye should not be accommodated within either politeness or impoliteness models (Leech, 1983; Brown and Levinson, 1987; Culpeper, 1996) but within Haugh and Bousfield’s (2012) model of mock impoliteness. Both the strategies and the audience's evaluations thereof indicate that evil eye is a non-impolite speech act.

Porous frontiers: priming as an extension of agenda setting and framing as a complementary approach

Agenda setting and priming both work under the premise that media affect audience evaluations by influencing the likelihood of some issues rather than other coming to mind. Framing, in turn, rests on the idea that, by representing the world in a certain way, media influence people to think about the world in particular ways. Agenda setting, priming and framing all suggest that media messages participate in the formation of the public knowledge and that knowledge is activated and used in politically relevant decisions.This paper provides a concise, accessible and clear overall perspective on these three theories and aims to provide theoretical and methodological clarifications that may lead to a better accommodation of these three ways of conceptualizing media influence on public opinion. The first part characterizes and elucidates on the meaning of priming and framing as traditionally being seen as an extension and a sub-species of agenda setting. It argues that although priming may be conceived as an extension of agenda setting, framing is not a sub species of agenda setting. In the second part, it contends that agenda setting and framing constitute different strands of research – namely, media effects based on an accessibility model and on a social constructivist, applicability model – and that, as such, they develop themselves autonomously and independently, even if they complement each other.

A processual view of organizational stigmatization in foreign market entry: The failure of Guggenheim Helsinki

Multinational organizations increasingly face strong resistance to their market entry by some local audiences, reflecting growing ideological divisions and populism in societies. We turned to the organizational stigma literature for the conceptual tools and vocabulary to uncover why multinationals can simultaneously be praised by some audiences and tainted by others. Drawing on a longitudinal explanatory case study of an unsuccessful market entry, we develop a process model of organizational stigmatization in a foreign market entry. Our model explains how and why some local audiences may taint the core attributes of an entry-seeking organization and its market entry process, while others may embrace the foreign entrant. We also introduce the notion of cross-border stigma translation where negative audience evaluations are amplified across geographic contexts. A focus on competing local audiences is important for understanding the generative mechanisms of the liability of foreignness and liability of origin and how to manage them. Our study grounds a conversation on the processes and mechanisms of organizational stigmatization that may cause permanent liabilities to foreign organizations.

YouTube celebrity endorsement: audience evaluation of source attributes and response to sponsored content. A case study of influencer Verdeliss

This article analyses follower response to the growing number of product endorsements present in YouTube videos published under the username “Verdeliss” by Estefanía Unzu Ripoll, Spain’s most popular YouTube influencer on the topic of maternity and childcare. Results of a self-administered online survey of 949 Verdeliss followers focused on their individual evaluations of source attributes indicate that Unzu Ripoll’s YouTube fans tend to buy products she endorses on the basis of her perceived likeability and expertise, and that the overall influence she exerts on their purchasing decisions is slight. In closing, the authors offer insights into how social media influencers can enhance the effectiveness of their online endorsements and identify tactics brands can employ to ensure that the influencers they collaborate with are optimally suited to promote their products.

Online Evaluation of Audiences for Targeted Advertising via Bandit Experiments

Firms implementing digital advertising campaigns face a complex problem in determining the right match between their advertising creatives and target audiences. Typical solutions to the problem have leveraged non-experimental methods, or used “split-testing” strategies that have not explicitly addressed the complexities induced by targeted audiences that can potentially overlap with one another. This paper presents an adaptive algorithm that addresses the problem via online experimentation. The algorithm is set up as a contextual bandit and addresses the overlap issue by partitioning the target audiences into disjoint, non-overlapping sub-populations. It learns an optimal creative display policy in the disjoint space, while assessing in parallel which creative has the best match in the space of possibly overlapping target audiences. Experiments show that the proposed method is more efficient compared to naive “split-testing” or non-adaptive “A/B/n” testing based methods. We also describe a testing product we built that uses the algorithm. The product is currently deployed on the advertising platform of JD.com, an eCommerce company and a publisher of digital ads in China.

Validação de cartilha sobre cateterização intravenosa periférica para famílias

Objetivo: validar o conteúdo e a aparência da tecnologia didática e instrucional intitulada Punção venosa periférica para família, junto aos familiares acompanhantes de crianças hospitalizadas. Métodos: trata-se de um estudo metodológico do tipo validação de tecnologia. Os participantes foram familiares acompanhantes de crianças hospitalizadas submetidas à cateterização intravenosa periférica. A coleta e a análise dos dados foram realizadas com base no Índice de Validação de Conteúdo, que considera desejável o valor igual ou superior a 0,80.Resultados: a cartilha foi validada na primeira rodada, na qual se obtiveram índices máximos na maioria das variáveis, com índice de validação de conteúdo global igual a 0,98. Entretanto, alguns familiares apontaram alterações a serem feitas no material. Conclusão: objetivo proposto pelo estudo foi alcançado, uma vez que a cartilha está validada quanto ao conteúdo e à aparência de acordo com a avaliação do público-alvo.

Quality evaluation and quality metrics in the cultural sector

This paper aims to present and analyse methodological perspectives that focus on qualitative and quantitative audience evaluation procedures in cultural organisations. Audience qualitative surveys are illustrated through different types of surveys related to the arts. The technological era proclaims its presence with new tools emerging for the accumulation of information and data, i.e., novel platforms, quality metrics, social media - that present the needs and behaviour of the audience through the evaluation process. Based on the theory of Holden (2006, 2009) the intrinsic, instrumental and institutional value of the arts is proposed for qualitative evaluation. Emphasis is given to the evaluation survey with 'meaning' that provides quality data about the intrinsic and instrumental value of cultural organisations, required even more imperatively today, as evidence for further funding.

Quality evaluation and quality metrics in the cultural sector

This paper aims to present and analyse methodological perspectives that focus on qualitative and quantitative audience evaluation procedures in cultural organisations. Audience qualitative surveys are illustrated through different types of surveys related to the arts. The technological era proclaims its presence with new tools emerging for the accumulation of information and data, i.e., novel platforms, quality metrics, social media - that present the needs and behaviour of the audience through the evaluation process. Based on the theory of Holden (2006, 2009) the intrinsic, instrumental and institutional value of the arts is proposed for qualitative evaluation. Emphasis is given to the evaluation survey with 'meaning' that provides quality data about the intrinsic and instrumental value of cultural organisations, required even more imperatively today, as evidence for further funding.

A White Family’s Oral Storytelling About Cancer Generates More Favorable Evaluations From Black American Audiences

ABSTRACT One proposition of Entertainment Education (EE) suggests that actors communicating messages should be ethnically and culturally homogenous with targeted audiences. The present study challenges this assumption by investigating audience evaluations of When Cancer Calls... (WCC), a unique 80-minute theatrical production based on actual phone conversations between family members dealing with a loved one's cancer diagnosis, treatment, and eventual death. In WCC, the family is White and all interactions are drawn verbatim from 61 recorded phone calls made over 13 months. This study addresses whether authentic family storytelling about cancer minimizes differences between the White family in WCC, diverse Persons of Color (POC), and specifically how WCC resonates with Black Americans' cancer experiences. Data collected (n=483) from audiences in four U.S. cities confirmed overall positive audience reactions to viewings of WCC. Blacks were significantly more likely to evaluate WCC favorably than Whites or other POC. Rooted in the prominence of oral communication traditions, these findings confirm the power of family storytelling as a vehicle for designing health communication campaigns for Black American audiences. For example, when Blacks were forbidden to learn how to read and write during American slavery, family storytelling was a powerful tool for preserving history, sharing news, resisting racism in hostile environments, and sustaining resilience necessary for survival. These WCC findings provide innovative strategies for facilitating communication among cancer patients and family members, especially Black Americans who are deeply affected and face ongoing challenges talking about cancer.