Low Media Coverage Research Articles

Does brand capital improve stock liquidity? Evidence from China

AbstractThis study investigates how brand capital affects stock market liquidity. We posit that brand capital improves the corporate information environment, enhances competitiveness, and increases firm visibility ultimately resulting in higher stock liquidity. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we find a positive relationship between brand capital and stock liquidity. Further analyses show that the effect of brand capital is more pronounced for firms with low media coverage and analyst following. Moreover, the effect of brand capital on stock liquidity is significant for non‐state‐owned enterprises. Our mechanism analyses also confirm that brand capital plays an informational role by effectively mitigating information asymmetry and adverse selection, leading to higher stock liquidity. Our study provides the first evidence of the nexus between brand capital and stock liquidity and extends the literature on the capital market implications of brand capital.

Cross-Country Analysis of the Association between Media Coverage and Exposure to Climate News with Awareness, Risk Perceptions, and Protest Participation Intention in 110 Countries

ABSTRACT Few studies analyze international media coverage of climate change, and few still explore media's role in public opinion about climate change from a comparative perspective. Using data from the 2022 Yale Meta survey of 108,946 Facebook monthly active users from 110 countries and territories, the current research finds that perceived awareness is associated with perceived personal and future risks but not protest participation intention. Only perceived personal harm was associated with protest intention. People in countries most exposed to climate-related impacts were more likely to show heightened perceptions of harm to self and future generations. An analysis of a subset of countries (n = 52) where media coverage data was externally available for 2015–2022 indicates that media coverage is positively associated with self-reported exposure to climate change and perceived awareness about the issue. However, media coverage is not related to perceived personal or future risks and is negatively associated with protest participation intent across countries. Despite low media coverage of climate change, citizens in poor and developing countries see climate change as a greater risk and are more willing to participate in protests compared to citizens in developed countries. Findings help clarify theoretical and practical implications for climate change communication research.

Changing maternal, infantand young child nutrition practices through social and behaviour change interventions implemented at scale: Lessons learned from Alive & Thrive.

Alive & Thrive (A&T) is an initiative designed to advance the implementation of maternal, infantand young child nutrition (MIYCN) social and behaviour change (SBC) at a large scale. The aims of this research were to: (1) describe A&T's SBC implementation processes and their impact based on a review of programme documents and peer-reviewed publications and (2) gather lessons learned from key informant interviews (N = 23) with A&T staff and stakeholders in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, India, Nigeriaand Vietnam. A&T's SBC approach used interpersonal communication, community mobilizationand mass media to address knowledge gaps, strengthen self-efficacyand shift social norms. The initiative used data for designand evaluation and facilitated scale and sustainability through close collaboration with governments and other stakeholders. A&T's approach increased exclusive breastfeeding, minimum meal frequency of childrenand use of iron and folic acid tablets by pregnant women, but had mixed impacts on early initiation of breastfeeding and maternal and child dietary diversity. Multiple SBC channels and frequent contacts strengthened the impact of SBC on MIYCN practices. Lessons learned included: using existing large-scale platforms for interpersonal communication, improving counselling skills of health workers, delivering timely tailored messages, engaging key influencers to take specific actions, using research to address underlying behavioural concerns and maximize mass media reach and frequency, using simple memorable messagesand employing additional channels to reach low media coverage areas. A&T developed and implemented at-scale MIYCN SBC in multiple countries, providing lessons learned about intervention strategies, engagement of influencersand mass media campaign development, which governments and other implementers can adapt and replicate.

Assessing the genetic composition of cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) before sweeping anthropogenic impact.

During the last century, the critically endangered cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) has been threatened by multiple anthropogenic factors that drastically affected their habitat and population size. As the genetic impact of these pressures is largely unknown, this study aimed to establish a genetic baseline with the use of temporal sampling to determine the genetic makeup before detrimental anthropogenic impact. Genomes were resequenced from a combination of historical museum samples and modern wild samples at low-medium coverage, to unravel how the cotton-top tamarin population structure and genomic diversity may have changed during this period. Our data suggest two populations can be differentiated, probably separated historically by the mountain ranges of the Paramillo Massif in Colombia. Although this population structure persists in the current populations, modern samples exhibit genomic signals consistent with recent inbreeding, such as long runs of homozygosity and a reduction in genome-wide heterozygosity especially in the greater northeast population. This loss is likely the consequence of the population reduction following the mass exportation of cotton-top tamarins for biomedical research in the 1960s, coupled with the habitat loss this species continues to experience. However, current populations have not experienced an increase in genetic load. We propose that the historical genetic baseline established in this study can be used to provide insight into alteration in the modern population influenced by a drastic reduction in population size as well as providing background information to be used for future conservation decision-making for the species.

Contexts motivating protective behaviours related to Aedes-borne infectious diseases in Curaçao

BackgroundAedes aegypti, the vector of arboviral diseases such as dengue and Zika virus infections, is difficult to control. Effective interventions must be practicable, comprehensive, and sustained. There is evidence that community participation can enhance mosquito control. Therefore, countries are encouraged to develop and integrate community-based approaches to mosquito control to mitigate Aedes-borne infectious diseases (ABIDs). Health professionals must understand the contexts motivating individuals’ behaviour to improve community participation and promote behavioural change. Therefore, this study aimed to determine how contexts shaped individuals’ protective behaviours related to ABIDs in Curaçao.MethodsFrom April 2019 to September 2020, a multi-method qualitative study applying seven (n = 54) focus group discussions and twenty-five in-depth interviews with locals was performed in Curaҫao. The study was designed based on the Health Belief Model (HBM). Two cycles of inductive and deductive coding were employed, and Nvivo software was used to manage and analyse the data.ResultsIn this study, low media coverage (external cue to action) and limited experience with the symptoms of ABIDs (internal cue to action) were linked with a low perceived susceptibility and severity of ABIDs (low perceived threat). The low perceived threat was linked with reduced health-seeking behaviour (HSB) to prevent and control ABIDs. We also found that the perceived barriers outweigh the perceived benefits of ABID prevention and control interventions, obstructing HSB. On the one hand, insufficient knowledge reduced self-efficacy but contrary to expected, having good knowledge did not promote HSB. Lastly, we found that our participants believe that they are responsible for preventing ABIDs (internal locus of control) but at the same time indicated that their success depends on the efforts of the community and the health system (external locus of control).ConclusionsThis study used the HBM to explain individual changes in HSB concerning ABIDs prevention and control in Curaçao. We can conclude that the perceived threat (perceived susceptibility and severity) and perceived barriers played an essential role in changing HSB. Health professionals must consider these two concepts' implications when designing a bottom-up approach for ABIDs control; otherwise, community participation will remain minimal.

Resilient product and production adaptation in a large‐scale disaster: Does it pay off?

AbstractPandemic outbreaks can disrupt firms’ normal operations, so they demand a resilient response. Firms can combine social responsibility initiatives with resilient responses by reconfiguring their production resources for pandemic relief. It remains unclear, however, whether pandemic‐relieving product adaptation (in short, PRPA) improves financial performance. We draw on stakeholder theory to analyze the effect of a PRPA strategy on the stock returns of US‐listed manufacturing firms during the COVID‐19 pandemic—the most enduring and large‐scale pandemic in recent history. The results reveal that the stock market reacts more positively to PRPA under severe pandemic circumstances and for firms with low political connectedness, low media coverage, and/or more unique production technology. The findings offer important implications for operations theory and practice.

Image Transfer in Sports Creative Sponsorship and Participation Sponsorship: What’s the Difference?

Participation sponsorship and creative sponsorship of sports events can have strategic communication effects. In this study of the car brand “Peugeot” in Tunisia, the impact of participation sponsorship on image transfer was compared with that of creative support, considering the moderating effect of the involvement of spectators on the image transfer process. Structural equation modeling analysis was used to validate the measurement of images and structural models of image transfer. The results largely favored sports-related creative sponsorship. Furthermore, when moving from “low involvement” to “high involvement” groups, observers of the creative backing were perceived as more intense, indicating that participation sponsorship has a decreasing impact. Research results have shown that it can be a more effective communication tool than multi-sponsoring. We conclude that creative support presents a real image transfer opportunity for sponsors that is less costly but more persuasive than participation. This assumption deserves to be verified for the indirect sports audience and in other cases of events with high and low media coverage.

Geographic proximity and corporate investment efficiency: Evidence from high-speed rail construction in China

Applying the difference-in-differences method, we show that high-speed rail (HSR) construction improves investment efficiency in China. The effect is more pronounced for companies with low information transparency and low media coverage, suggesting that HSR can mitigate information asymmetry while reducing external regulatory costs. Our analysis also shows that the effect is more powerful for non-state-owned enterprises, high-growth firms, and those companies located in core cities. Overall, our findings suggest that HSR can improve investment efficiency by shortening the travel time between firms and their investors.

Attention and Underreaction-Related Anomalies

Recent studies have proposed a large set of powerful anomaly-based factors in the stock market. This study examines the role of investor inattention in the corresponding anomalies underlying these factors and other underreaction-related anomalies. Using media coverage as a proxy for investor attention, we show that the anomalies underlying many recently proposed prominent factors are much more pronounced among firms with low media coverage in portfolio-formation periods. In addition, we find many other prominent anomalies that previous literature has attributed to underreaction also tend to perform much better among firms with low media coverage. The average Fama-French five-factor alpha spread of these anomalies is about 0.97% per month among firms with low news coverage and only 0.24% per month among firms with high news coverage. Moreover, most of the alpha spread comes from the short leg of the anomalies and from the firms that are more difficult to arbitrage. Overall, our evidence indicates that investor inattention at least partially drives many of the recently proposed factors. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance. Funding: L. Tao received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72171050], the Ministry of Education Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [Grant No. 17YJCZH161], and the University of International Business and Economics Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars [Grant No. 18JQ07]. J. Yu acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 71790591]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4332 .

Coverage of Children’s Issues in the Nepali Print and Online Media: Impact of Public Pressure on Media Gatekeeping

The media do not cover all the events and incidents of the day. There is a visible trend across the world that the process of gate keeping in the mass media outlets could be liberal with the presence of pressure groups. Though the usual trend of low media coverage on children in Nepal has been low, the spikes have been visible time and again with frequent and relentless persuasion of the cause in the form of pressure, advocacy and campaigns. Analysis of the media coverage of child-related issues from five national dailies and three prominent online news portals based on the cultivated data with qualitative and quantitative approaches demonstrate the direct relationship between the pressure and coverage. It reveals that influence over the gate keeping process would become the potential to cause wider coverage and prominence placement.

Disclosure Deregulation of Quarterly Reporting

In this article, we investigate the deregulation efforts resulting from the 2015 transposition of the EU’s Transparency Directive into German law and analyze whether a reduction in the minimum content requirements for quarterly reporting increases information asymmetries and decreases firm value. Using a novel dataset of firms that are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, our results reveal that over the period from 2012 to 2019, lower quarterly reporting levels on average have increased information asymmetry and reduced firm value. We find that this effect is stronger for second-tier stocks and firms with low media coverage. Our results are robust to potential selection effects regarding firms’ choice of quarterly reporting content levels.

Financial Transparency, Media Coverage, and Momentum in China

ABSTRACT This paper digests the influences of financial transparency and media coverage in the Chinese stock market. In China, media performs under a regulatory system and media information is regarded as the direction of news. In addition, the Chinese market is dominated by retail investors and financial information is always manipulated, so the reliability of financial information is quite intriguing. The effect of ostensible financial information on the stock market through the media hype is a crucial issue. We employ media and transparency to analyze over 3,000 stocks in China. First of all, the Chinese stock market is characterized by significantly negative momentum profit and thus exhibits price reversal. However, when high media coverage and high transparency jointly come into play, the significantly negative momentum profit turns to be significantly positive. This dramatic change alters the price reversal to be price momentum. By contrast, low media coverage and low transparency still result in price reversal.

Media Coverage and Underreaction-Related Anomalies

Recent studies have proposed a large set of powerful anomaly-based factors in the stock market. This study examines the role of investor inattention in the corresponding anomalies underlying these factors and other underreaction-related anomalies. Using media coverage as a proxy for investor attention, we show that the anomalies underlying many recently proposed prominent factors are much more pronounced among firms with low media coverage in portfolio formation periods. In addition, we find many other prominent anomalies that previous literature has attributed to underreaction also tend to perform much better among firms with low media coverage. The average Fama-French five-factor alpha spread of these anomalies is about 0.97% per month among firms with low news coverage and only 0.24% per month among firms with high news coverage. Moreover, most of the alpha spread comes from the short leg of the anomalies and from the firms that are more difficult to arbitrage. Overall, our evidence indicates that investor inattention at least partially drives many of the recently proposed factors.

Impact of surface curvature, grafting density and solvent type on the PEGylation of titanium dioxide nanoparticles

TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) are attracting materials for biomedical applications, provided that they are coated with polymers to improve solubility, dispersion and biocompatibility. Conformation, coverage density and solvent effects largely influence their functionality and stability. In this work, we use atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to study polyethylene glycol (PEG) grafting to highly curved TiO2 NPs (2–3 nm) in different solvents. We compare the coating polymer conformations on NPs with those on (1 0 1) flat surfaces. In water, the transition from mushroom to brush conformation starts only at high density (σ = 2.25 chains/nm2). In dichloromethane (DCM), at low-medium coverage (σ < 1.35 chains/nm2), several interactions between the PEG chains backbone and undercoordinated Ti atoms are established, whereas at σ = 2.25 chains/nm2 the conformation clearly becomes brush-like. Finally, we demonstrate that these spherical brushes, when immersed in water, but not in DCM, follow the Daoud-Cotton (DC) classical scaling model for the polymer volume fraction dependence with the distance from the center of star-shaped systems.

The Development and Challenges of Football Sport in Some Selected Woredas of North Showa Zone

The purpose of this study was to identify the development and challenges of football in some selected weredas of North Showa Zone. The subject in this study were 282 players 15 coaches’ 6 wereda sport officers and 4 zone sport officers selected from the total population of 940, 48 and 10 respectively. A descriptive survey study is used. As a methods of data gathering tools; questionnaire, interview, and document analysis were employed. To analyze the collected data, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Results of the study revealed that village is the main sources of youth football players for the woredas, Schools have been the main sources of potential coaches for teams. The major constraints associated with North Showa Zone football sport are found to have very low media coverage, absence of supporters’ association, a few number of spectators, only one club, lack of facilities and equipment, no regular salary for coaches and players, lack or absence of play field in the villages, not following scientific method of training by coaches and very low level of communication among stakeholders. To overcome these, every stakeholder should work hand to hand in order to solve the problems.

Identifying the Determinants of the Decision to Create Socially Responsible Funds: An Empirical Investigation

This paper proposes an empirical assessment of the main factors behind the decision of a corporate sponsor to launch a socially responsible (SR) fund. Our analysis is performed on a database that encompasses 414 SR fund creations by 46 corporate sponsors between 1990 and 2012. We provide evidence that economic and human resources slack, leverage, low media coverage and high extra-financial performance of the corporate sponsor contribute to an increase of the probability to propose SR funds. These results lead us to argue that the introduction of such funds goes beyond the economic objective of enlarging the market share of the corporate sponsor. It may thus be seen as a particular strategy in terms of communication and signaling, due to the specific characteristics of SR funds.

Measuring the agency costs of dispersed ownership: the case of repurchase initiations

Empirical investigations of the agency costs of dispersed ownership yield mixed results. A possible explanation for the lack of conclusive evidence is inaccurate measurement of the extent of the problem. We suggest that the extent of the problem be measured as theory suggests: by the wealth that managers commit to their firms. We examine the relative performance of different measures of the agency problem of dispersed ownership in the context of changes in payout policy affected by repurchase initiations. We find that the suggested measure – managerial equity wealth – can explain better than any other measure the market reaction to repurchase initiations. We also find that market reaction to repurchase initiation is smaller for firms with high media coverage than for firms with low media coverage and that repurchases that follow a large rise in stock prices elicit relatively small market reactions. Lastly, we find that market reaction to repurchase announcements decreases with the dividend yield of the firm, which suggests that share repurchases are relatively less important when dividends are used to alleviate the problems of free cash flows. Our results are robust to several modifications of the main test.

Impact of media on stock returns: an in-depth empirical study in China

Purpose – Media-effect refers to the phenomenon that stocks with no or low media coverage earn higher returns than stocks with high coverage. This paper aims to explore the existence of media-effect in China stock market and tests the two competing hypotheses explaining this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – The authors construct a research sample based on a media-coverage event: the publications of lists of the most wealthy Chinese individuals; in addition, they identify the stocks of which listed firms are led by a controller who is recognized on the publicized lists. This paper uses event study methodology to test the existence of media effect in China A-share market. The authors employed propensity score matching (PSM) to construct a control group with same number of non-listed stocks. Then compared the returns of the two portfolios to test the risk premium hypothesis, and the abnormal trading volume and price reaction around the event date is explored to test the over-attention underperformance hypothesis. Findings – Sampled stocks show significantly negative abnormal returns within the event period, but the matched control group formed by PSM shows no significant abnormal return, indicating that the risk premium hypothesis is not supported. Covered stocks show significantly magnified trading volume. The portfolio gains significant positive return before the event date but turns significantly negative afterward, which is consistent with the over-attention underperformance hypothesis. Originality/value – This paper offers insights into media-effect in China stock market and provides empirical evidence explaining its existence.

Unlocking the vault: next‐generation museum population genomics

Natural history museum collections provide unique resources for understanding how species respond to environmental change, including the abrupt, anthropogenic climate change of the past century. Ideally, researchers would conduct genome-scale screening of museum specimens to explore the evolutionary consequences of environmental changes, but to date such analyses have been severely limited by the numerous challenges of working with the highly degraded DNA typical of historic samples. Here, we circumvent these challenges by using custom, multiplexed, exon capture to enrich and sequence ~11,000 exons (~4 Mb) from early 20th-century museum skins. We used this approach to test for changes in genomic diversity accompanying a climate-related range retraction in the alpine chipmunks (Tamias alpinus) in the high Sierra Nevada area of California, USA. We developed robust bioinformatic pipelines that rigorously detect and filter out base misincorporations in DNA derived from skins, most of which likely resulted from postmortem damage. Furthermore, to accommodate genotyping uncertainties associated with low-medium coverage data, we applied a recently developed probabilistic method to call single-nucleotide polymorphisms and estimate allele frequencies and the joint site frequency spectrum. Our results show increased genetic subdivision following range retraction, but no change in overall genetic diversity at either nonsynonymous or synonymous sites. This case study showcases the advantages of integrating emerging genomic and statistical tools in museum collection-based population genomic applications. Such technical advances greatly enhance the value of museum collections, even where a pre-existing reference is lacking and points to a broad range of potential applications in evolutionary and conservation biology.

Stock Price Reaction to Supervisory Board Interventions: Empirical Evidence from Germany

Within the discussion about an efficient corporate governance system, considerable attention has been paid to the supervisory board’s responsibility to monitor top executives raising the question about the value relevance of supervisory board’s actions (i.e., control). We conduct an event study analyzing the effect of supervisory board interventions on the value of publicly listed firms in Germany between 2000 and 2006. With our study, we are among the first to empirically test two suppositions by Hermalin Weisbach (1998) which propose a negative stock price reaction when the CEO is fired based on private information of the supervisory board and a positive stock price reaction when the CEO is fired based on public information. Assuming that the amount of information available to the public increases with the media coverage of a company, we expect effects to differ depending on the company’s level of media coverage. This is confirmed by our empirical results: Looking at companies receiving low media coverage, we find a negative and significant effect of supervisory board interventions on firm value. Focusing on companies with high media coverage we find that supervisory board interventions have a positive effect on stock prices which is also significant when returns are cumulated over several days. These results supporting the predictions of Hermalin Weisbach (1998) prove to be robust when controlling for company characteristics (in particular size) in a multivariate regression setting.