Should firms circumvent or work through the news media?

This study examined whether corporate public agenda setting or corporate agenda building exerts a stronger influence on firms' public prominence. After controlling for the effects of firms' advertising expenditures and existing levels of prominence, results showed that in the absence of media salience, firms' public agenda-setting efforts had no influence on their change in prominence. In the presence of media salience, however, firms' public agenda-setting efforts had a negative influence on their change in prominence. In the context of public prominence, the study supports the news media's role as a third-party endorsement of firms as newsworthy entities. Future research should re-examine these relationships in the age of social media. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.