- Email: [email protected]
Use of affect in blog communication: Trust, Credibility, and Authenticity
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Public Relations Review
Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity Ji Young Kim a,∗ , Spiro Kiousis b , Juan-Carlos Molleda c a
School of Communications, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2550 Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2096 Weimer Hall, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400, USA c Department of Public Relations, Director, Online MAMC Public Relations and Communication Management, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400, USA b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 15 October 2013 Received in revised form 4 March 2015 Accepted 1 July 2015 Keywords: Compelling-arguments hypothesis Affective attributes Arousal Trust Credibility Authenticity
a b s t r a c t The purpose of this study was to test the compelling-arguments hypothesis in an agendabuilding framework, focusing on the role of affect in blog communication. Conducting a 3 × 3 factorial experiment with two manipulated independent variables (valence and arousal), this investigation examined the influences of these variables on public relations outcomes (credibility, trust, and authenticity) as potential consequences of agenda-building relationships. Our findings showed main effects of both independent variables on perceived trust and authenticity. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Agenda-setting theory describes that media tell the public “what to think about,” as well as “how to think” about objects (McCombs, 2004; p. 71). Numerous studies have found positive correlations supporting the transfer of salience regarding objects or attributes between the media and public agendas (i.e., McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Expanding from agenda-setting theory, scholars also explored who sets the media agenda by examining the transfer of salience between external sources (i.e., public relations information subsidies, such as news releases or spokespeople’s statements) and the media agenda (i.e., Miller, 2010). The concept of agenda building suggests that public relations practice can contribute to shaping agendas for news media and public opinion. The two levels of agenda building are object and attribute salience, and attributes have two dimensions: substantive and affective. Substantive attributes are based on cognitive reasoning (i.e., issue frame, reputation attributes) while affective attributes are based on emotional tone (McCombs, 2004; Sheafer, 2007). The notion of “compelling arguments” explains the effects of attributes (second level) on object salience (first level) (McCombs, 2004; Kiousis, 2005; Sheafer, 2007). In an experimental setting, Kiousis, Bantimaroudis, and Ban (1999) found that portrayals of candidates’ qualifications on media coverage can influence a public’s overall affective perceptions of political candidates. Surprisingly, not many studies have examined the effects of attributes on overall evaluations of objects. In particular, the influence of affective attributes has been less investigated than substantive attributes.
∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.Y. Kim), [email protected]fl.edu (S. Kiousis), [email protected]fl.edu (J.-C. Molleda). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002 0363-8111/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS
2
J.Y. Kim et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
2. Theory 2.1. Affective attributes The valence (tone) of a message is the most commonly used affective attribute in agenda-setting and agenda-building studies. However, other than valence, the role of emotions has been less explored in agenda-building research. Investigating the effects of emotions on communication messages, scholars have observed that emotionally arousing messages can increase the effectiveness of advertising (Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995), and emotions can play a significant role in evoking in-depth and rational thinking about an object (Coleman & Wu, 2010). Prior scholarship has focused on multiple dimensions of affective attributes: valence and arousal (i.e., stimulating or not) (i.e., Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001). Emotional arousal can increase cognitive thinking, and consequently, it can increase the importance judgment of an object. 2.2. Public relations outcomes Consequences of agenda setting and agenda building have been explored in political or business communication, including a public’s voting intentions or their perception of corporate reputations (i.e., Carroll & McCombs, 2003). As critical factors to evaluate public relations efforts, this study explored effects on the perceived trust, credibility, and authenticity. Perceived trust is a multi-dimensional concept of integrity, dependability, and competence (Hon & Grunig, 1999); credibility is about how one evaluates an object as persuasive and credible (i.e., Johnson & Kaye, 2004); and authenticity refers to the perceived uniqueness, originality, or genuineness of an object, a person, an organization, or an idea (Molleda, 2010). 3. Method 3.1. Sample and procedure A 3 × 3 factorial experiment with two manipulated variables (i.e., valence and arousal) was completed to examine agendabuilding relationships. Valence indicated whether a message was positive, neutral, or negative; while arousal indicated whether a message was stimulating or not. A total of 242 participants were recruited from a crowd-sourcing web service, “Mechanical Turk” (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). The participants were randomly assigned into one of nine conditions, and each participant reads a corporate blog message. A fictitious sportswear brand’s blog page was created describing its products, customer service, and a general health message promoting exercise. 3.2. Manipulation To manipulate the valence of a message, it differentiated how much messages described an organization positively or negatively. For example, a positive message emphasized excellent customer service (i.e., awarded prestigious national customer service award) and innovative product design (i.e., inspirational and stylish graphic prints) by the company. Also, it contained users’ comments on the page that praised the organization’s service. After participants read the blog message, they evaluated the valence of the message by two five-point semantic differential scales with the following word pairs: positive-negative and pleased-annoyed (Capota, van Hout, & van der Geest, 2007; Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001). An index score of the tone of a message was created by summing up the scores of the two items (Pearson’s r = .86, p < .001). The level of arousal in a message indicates how such messages provoked emotional appeal. In the current study, the level of arousal was manipulated with the use of emotional words (i.e., delightful, kind, awful, or horrible) and multimedia cues (i.e., YouTube video) in a corporate blog message. A high-arousal message contains a public relations campaign video and several emotional words in the text (i.e., energize, prestigious, exceptional, delightful, awful, and horrible). The level of arousal of a message was measured by two seven-point Likert scales: aroused and stimulated (Capota, van Hout, & van der Geest, 2007; Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001) (Pearson’s r = .71, p < .001). The two independent variables were successfully manipulated: valence (F = 6.690, df = 2, p < .05) and arousal (F = 5.583, df = 2, p < .05). 3.3. Measurement Trust was measured by 11 seven-point Likert scale items including the following statements: “I believe that this organization would act in my best interest,” and “If I required help, this organization would do its best to help me” (McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002; p. 355) (Cronbach’s ˛ = .98). Credibility was measured by four seven-point Likert scales (Johnson & Kaye, 2004; p. 627), and the responses were summed to measure the perceived credibility of the corporate blog where higher scores indicated higher credibility (Cronbach’s ˛ = .92). Authenticity was measured by 10 items including the following statements: “generally speaking, the image or claims of the organization evoke pleasure and fun,” and “I feel the organization’s offering accurately represents an original idea and design” (Molleda, 2010). Each statement was evaluated by a seven-point Likert scale and responses were summed to measure the perceived authenticity of the organization (Cronbach’s ˛ = .96).
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS J.Y. Kim et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
3
4. Results 4.1. Hypotheses testing A two-way MANOVA was conducted using the General Linear Model (significance level of .05). Our first two hypotheses proposed that the tone and arousal level of a message will affect the level of perceived credibility of the corporation in the blog message. Our results reveal the main effect of valence on perceived credibility (F (2,241) = 12.001, p < .001) offering support for the first hypothesis; however, the main effect of arousal was not supported (F (2,241) = .689, p > .05). The next two hypotheses proposed that the tone and arousal level of messages will affect publics’ perceived trust of the corporation in the blog message. Our results showed significant main effects for the two independent variables (valence: F (2,241) = 53.660, p < .001, and arousal: F (2,241) = 3.946, p < .05) supporting these two hypotheses. Our final two hypotheses predicted that the tone and arousal level of a message will affect the level of perceived authenticity of the corporation in the blog message. Main effects of valence and arousal were significant (valence: F (2,241) = 43.744, p < .001, and arousal: F (2,241) = 5.528, p < .05), supporting the final two hypotheses. 5. Discussion 5.1. Theoretical implications One major theoretical contribution of this study was its exploration of the attitudinal consequences of affect in public relations messages. From a “compelling-arguments” perspective, it examined the influence of affect on the evaluation of objects in messages. Although much research has explored the first and second levels separately, this current study highlighted the need to explore the first and second levels of salience formation and transfer concurrently (i.e., McCombs, 2004; Kiousis, 2005). Our results added evidence of the role of affective attributes in triggering cognitive information processing and influence overall assessments of objects (i.e., Coleman & Wu, 2010; Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995). Moreover, in addition to valence, this study included arousal as another dimension of affective attributes (i.e., Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001), and a main effect of arousal was discovered for the attitudinal consequences such as the perceived trust and authenticity. Finally, this study applied the agenda-building concept to business communication. Specifically, it emphasized several attitudinal consequences of corporate public relations’ efforts such as credibility, trust, and authenticity. The current study has value for offering an empirical testing of the construct of authenticity. 5.2. Practical implications Organizations communicate with their key publics through a wide range of communication channels, including blogs, websites, or social network sites, and their online communication strategies are one of the critical predictors of successful relationships between organizations and publics. The results of this study would suggest that practitioners should consider using both affective dimensions wisely when they develop blog message content. One prior study noted that when companypositive information comes directly from an organization, people view the message as being negative or less persuasive (Callison, 2004). However, our results showed that the effects of valence would be different on blogs, a new venue of public relations. In addition, the results indicated that both affective factors have significant effects on the relationship outcomes, particularly on the perceived trust and authenticity. By emphasizing the role of affective attributes in an online communication setting, the present inquiry showed that emotions from a message can play a significant role to build cognitive and overall evaluations of the organization. 6. Conclusion In closing, this study offered further insights into how affective attributes in messages can influence cognitive and overall evaluations of objects. Also, in the context of blog communications, an experimental study allowed us to observe a causal linkage of agenda-building relationships instead of only detecting correlational associations between blog messages and participants’ attitudes. Hence, it contributes to our understanding of the role of affective attributes both theoretically and practically for better public relations practices in an online communication environment. Future research should explore diverse ways to manipulate the level of emotions of messages in addition to using extreme emotional words or multimedia content. Also, we suggest that future research should empirically test the role of emotions in different communication contexts and explore other relationship outcome variables to strengthen our findings in this study. References Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5.
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS
4
J.Y. Kim et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Callison, C. (2004). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Perceptions of public relations practitioners. Journal of Public Relations Research, 16(4), 371–389. Capota, K., van Hout, M., & van der Geest, T. (2007). Measuring the emotional impact of Websites: A study on combining a dimensional and discrete emotion approach in measuring visual appeal of university Websites. In Proceedings of the 2007 conference on designing pleasurable products and interfaces ACM Press, 135–147. Coleman, R., & Wu, H. D. (2010). Proposing emotion as a dimension of affective agenda setting: Separating affect into two components and comparing their second-level effects. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 87(2), 315–327. Gorn, G., Pham, M. T., & Sin, L. Y. (2001). When arousal influences Ad evaluation and valence does not (and vice versa). Journal of Consumer Psychology, 11(1), 43–55. Hon, L., & Grunig, J. E. (1999). Guidelines for measuring relationships in public relations. Gainesville, FL: The Institute for Public Relations, Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation. Johnson, T. J., & Kaye, B. K. (2004). Wag the blog: How reliance on traditional media and the Internet influence credibility perceptions of Weblogs among blog users. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(3), 622–642. Kiousis, S. (2005). Compelling argument and attitude strength: Exploring the impact of second-level agenda-setting on public opinion of presidential candidate images. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10, 3–27. Kiousis, S., Bantimaroudis, P., & Ban, H. (1999). Candidate image attributes: Experiments on the substantive dimension of second level agenda setting. Communication Research, 26(4), 414–428. Lang, A., Dhillon, K., & Dong, Q. (1995). The effects of emotional arousal and valence on television viewers’ cognitive capacity and memory. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 39(3), 313–327. McCombs, M. (2004). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. Malden, MA: Polity. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of the mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176–187. McKnight, D. H., Choudhury, V., & Kacmar, C. (2002). Developing and validating trust measures for e-Commerce: An integrative typology. Information Systems Research, 13(3), 334–359. Miller, B. M. (2010). Community stakeholders and marketplace advocacy: A model of advocacy, agenda building, and industry approval. Journal of Public Relations Research, 22(1), 85–112. Molleda, J. C. (2010). Authenticity and the construct’s dimensions in public relations and communication research. Journal of Communication Management, 14(3), 223. Sheafer, T. (2007). How to evaluate it: The role of story-evaluative tone in agenda setting and priming. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 21–39.
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
ARTICLE IN PRESS Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Public Relations Review
Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity Ji Young Kim a,∗ , Spiro Kiousis b , Juan-Carlos Molleda c a
School of Communications, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2550 Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2096 Weimer Hall, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400, USA c Department of Public Relations, Director, Online MAMC Public Relations and Communication Management, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400, USA b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 15 October 2013 Received in revised form 4 March 2015 Accepted 1 July 2015 Keywords: Compelling-arguments hypothesis Affective attributes Arousal Trust Credibility Authenticity
a b s t r a c t The purpose of this study was to test the compelling-arguments hypothesis in an agendabuilding framework, focusing on the role of affect in blog communication. Conducting a 3 × 3 factorial experiment with two manipulated independent variables (valence and arousal), this investigation examined the influences of these variables on public relations outcomes (credibility, trust, and authenticity) as potential consequences of agenda-building relationships. Our findings showed main effects of both independent variables on perceived trust and authenticity. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Agenda-setting theory describes that media tell the public “what to think about,” as well as “how to think” about objects (McCombs, 2004; p. 71). Numerous studies have found positive correlations supporting the transfer of salience regarding objects or attributes between the media and public agendas (i.e., McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Expanding from agenda-setting theory, scholars also explored who sets the media agenda by examining the transfer of salience between external sources (i.e., public relations information subsidies, such as news releases or spokespeople’s statements) and the media agenda (i.e., Miller, 2010). The concept of agenda building suggests that public relations practice can contribute to shaping agendas for news media and public opinion. The two levels of agenda building are object and attribute salience, and attributes have two dimensions: substantive and affective. Substantive attributes are based on cognitive reasoning (i.e., issue frame, reputation attributes) while affective attributes are based on emotional tone (McCombs, 2004; Sheafer, 2007). The notion of “compelling arguments” explains the effects of attributes (second level) on object salience (first level) (McCombs, 2004; Kiousis, 2005; Sheafer, 2007). In an experimental setting, Kiousis, Bantimaroudis, and Ban (1999) found that portrayals of candidates’ qualifications on media coverage can influence a public’s overall affective perceptions of political candidates. Surprisingly, not many studies have examined the effects of attributes on overall evaluations of objects. In particular, the influence of affective attributes has been less investigated than substantive attributes.
∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.Y. Kim), [email protected]fl.edu (S. Kiousis), [email protected]fl.edu (J.-C. Molleda). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002 0363-8111/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS
2
J.Y. Kim et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
2. Theory 2.1. Affective attributes The valence (tone) of a message is the most commonly used affective attribute in agenda-setting and agenda-building studies. However, other than valence, the role of emotions has been less explored in agenda-building research. Investigating the effects of emotions on communication messages, scholars have observed that emotionally arousing messages can increase the effectiveness of advertising (Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995), and emotions can play a significant role in evoking in-depth and rational thinking about an object (Coleman & Wu, 2010). Prior scholarship has focused on multiple dimensions of affective attributes: valence and arousal (i.e., stimulating or not) (i.e., Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001). Emotional arousal can increase cognitive thinking, and consequently, it can increase the importance judgment of an object. 2.2. Public relations outcomes Consequences of agenda setting and agenda building have been explored in political or business communication, including a public’s voting intentions or their perception of corporate reputations (i.e., Carroll & McCombs, 2003). As critical factors to evaluate public relations efforts, this study explored effects on the perceived trust, credibility, and authenticity. Perceived trust is a multi-dimensional concept of integrity, dependability, and competence (Hon & Grunig, 1999); credibility is about how one evaluates an object as persuasive and credible (i.e., Johnson & Kaye, 2004); and authenticity refers to the perceived uniqueness, originality, or genuineness of an object, a person, an organization, or an idea (Molleda, 2010). 3. Method 3.1. Sample and procedure A 3 × 3 factorial experiment with two manipulated variables (i.e., valence and arousal) was completed to examine agendabuilding relationships. Valence indicated whether a message was positive, neutral, or negative; while arousal indicated whether a message was stimulating or not. A total of 242 participants were recruited from a crowd-sourcing web service, “Mechanical Turk” (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). The participants were randomly assigned into one of nine conditions, and each participant reads a corporate blog message. A fictitious sportswear brand’s blog page was created describing its products, customer service, and a general health message promoting exercise. 3.2. Manipulation To manipulate the valence of a message, it differentiated how much messages described an organization positively or negatively. For example, a positive message emphasized excellent customer service (i.e., awarded prestigious national customer service award) and innovative product design (i.e., inspirational and stylish graphic prints) by the company. Also, it contained users’ comments on the page that praised the organization’s service. After participants read the blog message, they evaluated the valence of the message by two five-point semantic differential scales with the following word pairs: positive-negative and pleased-annoyed (Capota, van Hout, & van der Geest, 2007; Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001). An index score of the tone of a message was created by summing up the scores of the two items (Pearson’s r = .86, p < .001). The level of arousal in a message indicates how such messages provoked emotional appeal. In the current study, the level of arousal was manipulated with the use of emotional words (i.e., delightful, kind, awful, or horrible) and multimedia cues (i.e., YouTube video) in a corporate blog message. A high-arousal message contains a public relations campaign video and several emotional words in the text (i.e., energize, prestigious, exceptional, delightful, awful, and horrible). The level of arousal of a message was measured by two seven-point Likert scales: aroused and stimulated (Capota, van Hout, & van der Geest, 2007; Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001) (Pearson’s r = .71, p < .001). The two independent variables were successfully manipulated: valence (F = 6.690, df = 2, p < .05) and arousal (F = 5.583, df = 2, p < .05). 3.3. Measurement Trust was measured by 11 seven-point Likert scale items including the following statements: “I believe that this organization would act in my best interest,” and “If I required help, this organization would do its best to help me” (McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002; p. 355) (Cronbach’s ˛ = .98). Credibility was measured by four seven-point Likert scales (Johnson & Kaye, 2004; p. 627), and the responses were summed to measure the perceived credibility of the corporate blog where higher scores indicated higher credibility (Cronbach’s ˛ = .92). Authenticity was measured by 10 items including the following statements: “generally speaking, the image or claims of the organization evoke pleasure and fun,” and “I feel the organization’s offering accurately represents an original idea and design” (Molleda, 2010). Each statement was evaluated by a seven-point Likert scale and responses were summed to measure the perceived authenticity of the organization (Cronbach’s ˛ = .96).
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS J.Y. Kim et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
3
4. Results 4.1. Hypotheses testing A two-way MANOVA was conducted using the General Linear Model (significance level of .05). Our first two hypotheses proposed that the tone and arousal level of a message will affect the level of perceived credibility of the corporation in the blog message. Our results reveal the main effect of valence on perceived credibility (F (2,241) = 12.001, p < .001) offering support for the first hypothesis; however, the main effect of arousal was not supported (F (2,241) = .689, p > .05). The next two hypotheses proposed that the tone and arousal level of messages will affect publics’ perceived trust of the corporation in the blog message. Our results showed significant main effects for the two independent variables (valence: F (2,241) = 53.660, p < .001, and arousal: F (2,241) = 3.946, p < .05) supporting these two hypotheses. Our final two hypotheses predicted that the tone and arousal level of a message will affect the level of perceived authenticity of the corporation in the blog message. Main effects of valence and arousal were significant (valence: F (2,241) = 43.744, p < .001, and arousal: F (2,241) = 5.528, p < .05), supporting the final two hypotheses. 5. Discussion 5.1. Theoretical implications One major theoretical contribution of this study was its exploration of the attitudinal consequences of affect in public relations messages. From a “compelling-arguments” perspective, it examined the influence of affect on the evaluation of objects in messages. Although much research has explored the first and second levels separately, this current study highlighted the need to explore the first and second levels of salience formation and transfer concurrently (i.e., McCombs, 2004; Kiousis, 2005). Our results added evidence of the role of affective attributes in triggering cognitive information processing and influence overall assessments of objects (i.e., Coleman & Wu, 2010; Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995). Moreover, in addition to valence, this study included arousal as another dimension of affective attributes (i.e., Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001), and a main effect of arousal was discovered for the attitudinal consequences such as the perceived trust and authenticity. Finally, this study applied the agenda-building concept to business communication. Specifically, it emphasized several attitudinal consequences of corporate public relations’ efforts such as credibility, trust, and authenticity. The current study has value for offering an empirical testing of the construct of authenticity. 5.2. Practical implications Organizations communicate with their key publics through a wide range of communication channels, including blogs, websites, or social network sites, and their online communication strategies are one of the critical predictors of successful relationships between organizations and publics. The results of this study would suggest that practitioners should consider using both affective dimensions wisely when they develop blog message content. One prior study noted that when companypositive information comes directly from an organization, people view the message as being negative or less persuasive (Callison, 2004). However, our results showed that the effects of valence would be different on blogs, a new venue of public relations. In addition, the results indicated that both affective factors have significant effects on the relationship outcomes, particularly on the perceived trust and authenticity. By emphasizing the role of affective attributes in an online communication setting, the present inquiry showed that emotions from a message can play a significant role to build cognitive and overall evaluations of the organization. 6. Conclusion In closing, this study offered further insights into how affective attributes in messages can influence cognitive and overall evaluations of objects. Also, in the context of blog communications, an experimental study allowed us to observe a causal linkage of agenda-building relationships instead of only detecting correlational associations between blog messages and participants’ attitudes. Hence, it contributes to our understanding of the role of affective attributes both theoretically and practically for better public relations practices in an online communication environment. Future research should explore diverse ways to manipulate the level of emotions of messages in addition to using extreme emotional words or multimedia content. Also, we suggest that future research should empirically test the role of emotions in different communication contexts and explore other relationship outcome variables to strengthen our findings in this study. References Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5.
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002
G Model PUBREL-1419; No. of Pages 4
ARTICLE IN PRESS
4
J.Y. Kim et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Callison, C. (2004). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Perceptions of public relations practitioners. Journal of Public Relations Research, 16(4), 371–389. Capota, K., van Hout, M., & van der Geest, T. (2007). Measuring the emotional impact of Websites: A study on combining a dimensional and discrete emotion approach in measuring visual appeal of university Websites. In Proceedings of the 2007 conference on designing pleasurable products and interfaces ACM Press, 135–147. Coleman, R., & Wu, H. D. (2010). Proposing emotion as a dimension of affective agenda setting: Separating affect into two components and comparing their second-level effects. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 87(2), 315–327. Gorn, G., Pham, M. T., & Sin, L. Y. (2001). When arousal influences Ad evaluation and valence does not (and vice versa). Journal of Consumer Psychology, 11(1), 43–55. Hon, L., & Grunig, J. E. (1999). Guidelines for measuring relationships in public relations. Gainesville, FL: The Institute for Public Relations, Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation. Johnson, T. J., & Kaye, B. K. (2004). Wag the blog: How reliance on traditional media and the Internet influence credibility perceptions of Weblogs among blog users. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(3), 622–642. Kiousis, S. (2005). Compelling argument and attitude strength: Exploring the impact of second-level agenda-setting on public opinion of presidential candidate images. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10, 3–27. Kiousis, S., Bantimaroudis, P., & Ban, H. (1999). Candidate image attributes: Experiments on the substantive dimension of second level agenda setting. Communication Research, 26(4), 414–428. Lang, A., Dhillon, K., & Dong, Q. (1995). The effects of emotional arousal and valence on television viewers’ cognitive capacity and memory. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 39(3), 313–327. McCombs, M. (2004). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. Malden, MA: Polity. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of the mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176–187. McKnight, D. H., Choudhury, V., & Kacmar, C. (2002). Developing and validating trust measures for e-Commerce: An integrative typology. Information Systems Research, 13(3), 334–359. Miller, B. M. (2010). Community stakeholders and marketplace advocacy: A model of advocacy, agenda building, and industry approval. Journal of Public Relations Research, 22(1), 85–112. Molleda, J. C. (2010). Authenticity and the construct’s dimensions in public relations and communication research. Journal of Communication Management, 14(3), 223. Sheafer, T. (2007). How to evaluate it: The role of story-evaluative tone in agenda setting and priming. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 21–39.
Please cite this article in press as: Kim, J. Y., et al. Use of affect in blog communication: trust; credibility; and authenticity. Public Relations Review (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.07.002