How Can Press Releases from Ngos Affect the News Agenda?

How can press releases from NGOs affect the news agenda?

Greenpeace and WWF’s Agenda-Building strategy

11632488

Jou I Chen

Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication

Erasmus Mundus Journalism

Supervisor: Sabine Geers

Date of completion: June 2, 2019

How can press releases from NGOs affect the news agenda?

Greenpeace and WWF’s Agenda-Building strategy

Abstract

Environmental nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) put their effort into many issues such as wildlife, climate, plastic wastes, air pollution, forest, oceans, energy, fresh

Water, food and so on. To advocate for their ideals, NGOs employ agenda-building strategy to convey their messages on as many media platforms as they can. The current study aims to understand the impact of several variables from press releases, one of the formats of information subsidies, and how can environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF use it to influence the news agenda of news outlets. The finding shows that the human testimony from PR professionals or other staff of the organizations and the statistics or research results provided by the NGOs could somehow help them building the news agenda, but differences can be seen between our two target organizations. Nevertheless, the salience of issues in press releases from Greenpeace or WWF are found not positively related to the salience of issues in news articles. To further explain our findings, theoretical and practical implications are analyzed in the discussion part.

Keywords environmental issues, agenda building, WWF, Greenpeace, press release

Introduction

It is not rare that journalists use massive amounts of information from public relations materials like press releases, brochures, speeches, annual reports in their articles. To save more budget as the shrinkage of circulation and readers getting serious, they tend to form a story based on sources outside the newsroom instead of investing time and cost to interview and investigate on their own (Lewis, Williams & Franklin, 2008). This tendency thus gives NGOs a chance to shape the news agenda as an information provider, especially when compared with PR materials from the corporation, media workers prefer sources from agencies “with no obvious self-

2 serving purpose” (Curtin, 1999). To NGOs, able to affect the news content and be covered widely is important since it is an efficient way to deliver their messages, gain supporters, persuade the public and even further influence policymakers. (Waisbord, 2011)

To understand the relationship between PR materials from nonprofit organizations and media attention, the study takes two of the biggest international environmental organizations as research objects. Greenpeace for example, founded in 1971, activating in over 55 countries with

2.8 million members worldwide, it conducts “research, lobbying, communication strategies and quiet diplomacy” as their means to pursue their goals regarding environment protection.

(Greenpeace European Unit, n.d.) Similar but not the same, the Switzerland-based World

Wildlife Fund (WWF) has over five million supporters around the world, instead of frequently launches the campaign activities like Greenpeace does, they devoted directly to actual fieldwork such as preserving landscapes, saving endangered species, increasing sustainable use of natural resources and so on. However, both of them have used media to advocate their action and attract the public’s attention, a process so-called agenda building. In detail, they carry out the strategy of “source professionalization” (Blumler, 1990), that is, hiring PR professionals to take charge of publishing news releases, holding press conferences, keeping a good relationship with journalists, running social media accounts and so on.

The dominant position of sources in the news coverages can be explained by Gandy’s (1982) instrumental concept of “information subsidies”. He issues that through the employment of sourcing strategies, “the subsidy giver” raises the probability of their messages to be used by

“reducing the costs faced by journalists in satisfying organizational requirement” (p.62), which then influence the news content. On the one hand, a few studies suggest that NGOs can obtain media exposure by meeting the “journalistic logic”, such as offering “dramatic, conflict-driven and celebrity news” (Waisbord, 2011, p.145). On the other hand, other research found that

3 accuracy and credibility are of substance for NGOs to earn more spaces in the news articles

(Krøvel, 2012; Kwenda, 2013; Mcpherson, 2016).

However, many studies with regard to agenda building put emphasis on political public relations and corporate communication, only a few of them have taken care of “how civil actors such as NGOs seek to build the media’s agenda” (Yang & Saffer 2018, p.424) This is the gap this study aims to fill, with special focus on certain aspects of press releases and to what extent can those elements influence the news content by asking the following research question: What factors in press releases from environmental NGOs Greenpeace and WWF can affect the news agenda?

By carrying out quantitative content analysis and examining the coverages from British outlets

The Guardian and The Telegraph as well as the press releases from Greenpeace and WWF under the time frame of two years from January 2017 to December 2018, specific attention will be given to three elements in the press releases to answer the research question, namely, the human testimony from PR professionals and NGO workers; The salience of issues in news releases and the statistics or research results provided by NGOs. Hoping to find out how can press releases from environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF obtain more media exposure to promote their ideals.

Agenda Building Theory: Agenda Setting from PR perspective

Agenda setting theory asserts that public opinion can be shaped by media when certain issues been stressed over others. People are more likely to consider issues that acquire more media exposure as more important ones (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). In other words, agenda setting mainly concentrates on how media transfer the salience of issues to the public (Kim & Kiousis,

2012; Yang & Saffer, 2018), expanding from this concept, many scholars further asking “who, or what, sets the media’s agenda” (Turk & Franklin, 1987, p. 29). As Gandy (1982) points out,

“I suggest we go beyond agenda-setting to determine who sets the media agenda, how and for what purpose it is set, and with what impact on the distribution of power and values in society”

(p. 266), which refers to agenda building, a theory widely discussed in the field of public relations and defined as the ‘‘overall process of creating mass media agendas’’ (Berkowitz &

Adams, 1990, p. 723).

As the public relations’ aspect of agenda setting theory, agenda building has contributed to what various types of organizations can do to reach their goals of raising attention on certain issues by gaining more media exposure. Dutton (1986) states, agenda building is a strategy to distribute attention and catch decision makers’ eyes in the organization, in order to “make an issue consensual, legitimate and resource consuming.” (p.4) Attempts to explain how agenda building process employed between issues in PR materials and media coverages, Corbett and

Mori (1999) take breast cancer as an example, first the issue was discussed in the public arena, next interest groups took part in the discussion to present their position via PR materials, then their opinion eventually affected the news media and the mass.

Nevertheless, PR practitioners are considered rather passive and need to wait for an appropriate opportunity to get involved in the discourse (Corbett and Mori, 1999). In contrast, see agenda building as “the salience of the issues that the organization is communicating about (or the organization itself)” (p. 658), Kim and Kiousis (2012) believe PR materials can play a positive role in shaping the media agenda, they issue that there are two levels of agenda building, the first level put emphasis on “the transfer of object (i.e., issues, political figures, or organizations) salience among public relations messages, media coverage, and public opinion”(p.659), and public relations professional can raise media and public concern towards particular objects by offering information relevant to it. At the second level, PR practitioners play an important role in framing objects, which would alter how media and public perceive an object. As Carroll &

McCombs (2003) explain, “At the first level, agenda-setting effects are on attention. At the

5 second level, agenda-setting effects are on comprehension” (p.38), the goal is to make the news content reflects same position and characteristics as what supplied in the PR materials.

Information Subsidies

Before further explore different aspects of agenda building strategies in political public relations, corporate communications and the focal point of our study- agenda building strategies of NGOs, it is necessary to introduce the concept of information subsidies first, since it is of the essence in the process of agenda building, various studies have proven that positive connection exists between news agenda and public relations messages, namely information subsidies. (Turk,

1985; Kim & Kiousis, 2012; Kiousis & Ragasfn j, 2016) As Berkowitz & Adams (1990) note,

“The importance of studying the role of information subsidies in the agenda-building process is that it helps assess the magnitude of news source power” (p. 723). Tedsco (2011) also remarks that “agenda building explores the sources that make up news content and influence the mass media agenda” (Strömbäck, J., & Kiousis, S., p.78).

Specifically speaking, the concept of information subsidies brought by Gandy (1982) maintains that through strategic application of providing information to news media, “the subsidy giver” can enhance the chances of those contents being used in the coverages. This is because it

“reduces the costs faced by journalists in satisfying organizational requirement” (Gandy, 1982, p.62), which means media workers can therefore produce more contents in a cheaper and easier way. Based on McManus's (1994) model of market- driven Journalism, Curtin (1999) also agrees on the growing economic pressures in the media industry “causing journalists to abandon traditional public service values in favor of more cost-efficient ones” (p.53). To be more specific, as the profit of news media decreases year by year, without sufficient circulation and readers, correspondents can only lower the budget of newsgathering with “an increasingly pressurized and low-paid work force” (Lewis et al., 2008, p28) to fill the great news space, thus they choose to utilize more information subsidies from the PR practitioners, for example, press 6 releases, annual reports, brochures and speeches, etc. This media environment makes the relation between correspondent and their sources truly tight, Gans(1979) describes that it is just like the partner dance “tango”, and although ‘‘it takes two to tango, but more over than not, sources do the leading’’ (Gans, 1979, p. 116).

Consequently, information subsidies have become more significant, as mentioned previously, there are two levels of agenda building, to wit: the transfer of object and the frame. Parmelee

(2014) indicates that “there is compelling evidence that information subsidies often result in first- and second-level agenda building” (p.436). In other words, involving in these two levels of agenda building, information subsidies help to transfer objects like issues, the image of politicians or organizations from PR messages to news coverages, and to influence peoples’ points of view to a greater degree.

Furthermore, Turk (1985) categorizes the qualities of information subsidies into “proactive and reactive”, the former such as press releases, are launched by PR professionals, while the latter are “journalist-initiated”, for instance, their interviews with members from the information providers (p.12). This research focuses particularly on how press release as a proactive sort of information subsidies from NGOs can earn more spaces in the news, since it has been the most studied type of information subsidies with scholars’ attention for over four decades (Kiousis &

Ragas, 2016), showing how important it is as an influential source to news agenda.

Press release here is defined as “a written statement about a matter of public interest which is given to the press by an organization concerned with the matter” (Collins Dictionary, n.d.).

Agenda Building under the political and corporate context

Yang & Saffer (2018) argues that in general, most agenda-building research has been put “in the context of political public relations” (p.424) Topics such as influencing media agenda during political campaign or promoting for the political figures or the policies can often be seen.

Several studies found that as a major format of information subsidies, news releases hold a dominant position in shaping the news agenda for political campaign. (Roberts & McCombs,

1994; Kiousis, Kim, McDevitt, & Ostrowski, 2009; Kiousis, Mitrook, Wu, & Seltzer, 2006;

Harris, Fury & Lock, 2006).

Kiousis, Kim, McDevitt & Ostrowski (2009) cite Kaid’s (1976) observation that “candidate news releases are frequently printed verbatim in news coverage during the political campaigns”

(p.547). In comparison with political issues, campaign statements and personal information of the candidates are more likely to be used by news media. Besides, Walters, Walters, & Gray

(1996) state that, “media placements of press release material bring legitimacy and attention to issues favorable to campaign and candidate”(p.10) Legitimacy refers to the level of trust the public has towards issues brought by political PR practitioners, while attention means the media exposure a topic gains and its involvement to the news agenda.

Besides, corporate communications is also a major field in agenda building studies, distinct from political communication- which with an aim to increase salience of political issues and image of political figures, it takes care of how companies make the use of media coverage to strengthen their brand visibility and corporate reputation (Carroll & McCombs, 2003; Kiousis,

Popescu, & Mitrook, 2007). The two levels of agenda building process also employed in the corporate sphere (Wartick, 1992), to begin with, the business sector should first ensure public awareness of their brand, media exposure is considered to be an effective measure to persuade the mass. After earning the attention from the media, the second level of this process is to lead the news content reflecting the image the firms want to build, and “the amount of coverage the media devotes to a ﬁrm’s various attributes will aﬀect the salience of those attributes among the public” (McCombs, 2003, p.39).

Agenda-Building Strategies of NGOs

Although not as many as that of political public relations and corporate communication, there are still a little literature looks into how nonprofit organizations employ agenda building strategy. To achieve their organizational goals, many NGOs have taken on “professional approaches”, which aim at becoming “news shapers” (Manheim, 2008) and persuading two types of audiences: “members/supporters and external actors like policy makers, the press and public opinion” (Waisbord, 2011, p.147). This development including “source professionalization” (Blumler, 1990), in detail, the organizations hire PR professionals to generate effective communication strategies via information subsidies measures such as publishing news releases, holding press conferences, running social media accounts and so on.

The importance of PR and news access to NGOs is just like how Van Leuven, Deprez&

Raeymaeckers (2014) described, “news coverage is a battlefield for NGO campaigns, and PR is a major weapon to manage it” (p.434). The good news to NGOs is, compared to the PR materials from business sector, media workers are more likely to use those from nonproﬁt organizations and government, because it has no distinct profit purpose, thus is a “less evil” option to the journalists (Turk,1985). To some of them, NGO materials are even considered as a “useful corrective to government PR” (Lewis et al.,2008, p41), which could be trustworthy and informative, and a good way to lessen journalist’s burden on confirming the facts

(Powers,2015).

Waisbord (2011) suggested that NGOs can successfully affect news agenda “when their news making strategies both conform to the dominant journalistic logic, and find interest among political newsmakers and news organizations” (p.145). Overall, NGOs should meet the” journalistic logic” which he defined as four components: “news values, media formats, labor conditions, and editorial positions” (p.149).

Through previous discussion, we know that press releases as one type of information subsidies playing a significant role in building the news agenda, the current study therefore concentrates on the following three elements of it to answer our research question:

First of all, PR materials from NGOs often used in news articles when “speaking on topics legitimated by government officials” (Powers,2015, p.316). Powers (2015) indicated that

NGOs are often “mentioned later in news articles and after other news sources” (p.324), and they do cater to some media logics which “are not mechanically controlled” (Powers 2014, p.103) by them. For example, NGOs carry an endorsement from celebrities, initiate eye- catching campaigns, personalize the contents of press releases for different regions and try to prevent scandals (Cottle and Nolan 2007). To make their information more newsworthy, many

NGOs would also respond to the “news events” immediately by publishing announcements or accepting interviews. The news events refer to news happened within 24 hours or a topic being discussed a lot in the society, it could be “parliamentary debates, natural disasters, health emergencies, corruption scandals, and human rights abuses, etc” (Waisbord, 2011, p.153).

In other words, NGOs can have visibility in news as a complement of a story even when they are not the main character of the story. In this sense, “quotability” is a substantial quality of a news release, when journalists quote the sentences from a press release directly, the subsidy giver is more likely to convey their messages in the way they want. (Culbertson & Stempel,

1984) Clayman (1995) presents that what journalists choose to extract from press releases are based on three basic considerations, that is, “narrative relevance” with the news events;

“Consciousness”, being extraordinary to catch media’s attention, and “extractability”, the PR contents which can “stand on their own with little or no journalistic elaboration” (p.127) These factors influencing acceptance of information subsidies are called “source motives” in Len-

Ríos, Hinnant, Park, Cameron, Frisby & Lee’s study (2009). Based on this, following set of hypotheses was generated:

H1a. The frequency of WWF’s opinion quoted in the news coverages will be positively related to the possibility it mentioned as a supplement of the certain news events in those coverages.

H1b. The frequency of Greenpeace’s opinion quoted in the news coverages will be positively related to the possibility it mentioned as a supplement of the certain news events in those coverages.

Secondly, many scholars see issue salience as the core of agenda setting and building theory

(Hallahan, 2001; Kiousis et al.,2006 ), like Kim and Kiousis (2012) state, “agenda building refers to the salience of the issues that the organization is communicating about” (p.658).

According to Dutton (1986)’s “The Issue-Specific Context”, agenda building model works when an issue is put on the organization’s agenda because of people’s awareness of the issue and/or their engagement in the discussion of the issue, the former refers to “issue exposure” while the latter means “issue interest”. Dutton (1986) indicates, not all issues can have equal chances on drawing attention to decision makers, “differences in an issue’s salience draw different levels of interest and exposure to an issue.” (p.7) As “active mediators”, the decision makers in the news media can be who determine which issues should be in the spotlight, such as editorial board. This can also be explained by issue publics theory, that is, people are more aware of and willing to be well-informed by issues that are relevant to them, in contrast, they do not care much about issues that are not that important in their life (Iyengar, 1990; Krosnick

& Telhami, 1995; Brenes, Wojcieszak, Lelkes, & de Vreese,2017).

Knowing the significant role issues play in agenda building process and based on the previous hypotheses, to provide more practical insights, the paper intends to know further about what sorts of environmental issues were mentioned and discussed the most in the media coverages and whether do they have positive association with the press releases provided by Greenpeace or WWF by testing the following hypothesis:

H2. The salience of issues in press releases from Greenpeace or WWF will be positively related to the salience of issues in the news articles mentioned them.

Finally, there are some findings reveal that NGOs do not necessarily need to adapt to journalistic logic all the time and being exaggerated and dramatic to pursue media exposure. In fact, they can use their quality as nonprofit organizations to provide credible and informative materials to earn the trust from media workers, because in the eyes of some journalists, NGOs as “the subsidy giver” are “more dependable” than that of government officials and business sectors (Lewis et al.,2008), they “generally keep more comprehensive and current data”

(Waisbord, 2011, p153).

To be specific, credibility is regarded as a substantial quality of sources from NGOs if they attempt to affect the news content, Kwenda (2013) indicates that “information as the currency of influence” to NGOs, must be correct and comprehensive enough to build media and public trust (p.70). After tracking 17 environmental NGOs in Norway over 10 years, Krøvel (2012) also found that instead of being dramatic, NGOs which have been covered in the media coverages the most are those dedicated to producing extensive information and knowledge, they provide journalists with “in-depth expertise on scientific background information” (p.31) These background information can be statistics or reliable results from research conducted by professionals in the area, Mcpherson (2016) suggests, nonprofit organizations can corporate with other NGOs to complete this work , especially those “with more established reputations”.

(p338.) Corresponding to the above, following sets of hypotheses are to test to what extent can the statistics and research results given by WWF and Greenpeace influence the news agenda:

H3a. The statistics and research results provided by WWF in the press releases will influence the prominence of these research mentioned in the media coverage.

H3b. The statistics and research results provided by Greenpeace in the press releases will influence the prominence of these research mentioned in the media coverage.

Methods and Data a. General description of chosen method

This study applies quantitative content analysis as research approach, which often used in the field of communication and media study and many other social science topics, it refers to “a family of procedures for the systematic, replicable analysis of text” based on the practice of “a structured, systematic coding scheme from which conclusions can be drawn about the message content” (Rose, 2015, p.2). In the case of this study, conducting content analysis would be helpful in observing the elements of news related to environmental INGOs from a relatively objective view of point, also the study expect to deal with 450 news articles and press releases in total from two chosen British news outlets and both INGOs, a structured and systematic quantitative research is needed with this large number. b. News outlet selection

The thesis will focus on the coverages from two major quality newspapers in the UK—The

Telegraph and The Guardian, the former has been a left-wing publication while the later belongs to right-leaning. By investigating the articles from each outlet, the study hopes to see how traditional media covered and influenced by the information subsidies from the environmental

INGOs, and the difference of story selection between two newspapers with opposite ideologies if there is any, also to be more diverse concerning where we derive samples from. c. Sample

The sample would be a random collection of articles from two British newspapers —The

Telegraph and The Guardian, and also from the official sites of Greenpeace and WWF. Firstly,

13 to gather news articles in print and online from the chosen British outlets The Guardian and

The Telegraph, each NGO’s name- Greenpeace and WWF would be used as key words to search in the databases on the news websites under the time frame of two years from January

2017 to December 2018. On the one hand, since most of the big international organizations like

Greenpeace and WWF will create their yearly plans and give a review for what they have achieved in the middle of next year, this time frame allows the author to do a complete observation of last two year. On the other hand, according to Greenpeace’s annual report 2017, they have done a lot in the fields of forest, Arctic oil, climate Justice and nuclear issues (annual report 2017 Greenpeace International, n.d.); As for WWF, climate and energy, marine and terrestrial conservation were their main focuses in 2017 (annual report 2017 WWF, n.d.). With this information and time period, we can see which topics were considered important to both organizations before examining the issues presented in the press releases and news coverages, and whether does it corresponds to their organizational goals or not.

Furthermore, the author collected 150 coverages from each outlet (total N=300) to examine and support the findings. Secondly, 150 press releases were gathered from the official sites of

Greenpeace UK and WWF UK to see whether the media coverages they gained matches the contents they provided in the sources or not. Both websites list all the press releases in their news sections, in overall, 450 articles were collected and coded to answer the research question and to verify the hypotheses. It is worth noting that, after cutting out the missing values which failed to record during the coding process, 292 news coverages and 150 press releases were eventually used to test our four hypotheses. d. Dependent Variables

Greenpeace and WWF’s media coverage: As noted above, 300 articles from The Telegraph and

The Guardian mentioned the two environmental organizations would be examined. To test our hypotheses, following elements in the media coverages were specially coded: 14

The quotes from PR practitioners and other NGO staff members: A sentence is considered to be a quote during our coding process when it is with a quotation mark “ ”, which means it is directly from the original talks or articles from PR practitioners or other staff members of

Greenpeace or WWF without retouching. The staff members could be a scientist, an organizer of a campaign or a project manager in the organization. Q5 and Q6 from our codebook for news coverages were to test it.

The statistic or research results from both NGOs: Greenpeace or WWF conducts many investigations regarding all kinds of environmental issues, an article is considered mentioned the statistic or research results when it gives the clear information such as “Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds” (Carrington, 2018). Q7 from our codebook for news coverages was to test it.

The types of environmental issues mentioned: There were many environmental issues covered in the news articles, and we categorized it into food, climate, fresh water, wildlife, forest, oceans, plastic wastes, energy, air pollution and others. Coder read through each coverage and judge which category it mainly belongs to. Q9 from our codebook for news coverages was to test it.

Any “news event” related to environmental issues: The news events refer to news happened within 24 hours or a topic being discussed a lot in the society, it could be “parliamentary debates, natural disasters, health emergencies, corruption scandals, and human rights abuses, etc”

(Waisbord, 2011, p.153). If an NGO mentioned in the articles because of the particular news events, then it is as a supplementary of a story rather than being a protagonist. Q8 from our codebook for news coverages was to test it. e. Independent Variables

Greenpeace UK and WWF UK’s information subsidies: Information subsidies can be in many formats like speech, press conference, interviews and any materials provided by PR practitioner,

15 here we focus on the press releases published on the official sites of Greenpeace UK and WWF

UK, using separate codebook from what for news coverages, the following factors in the news releases were examined:

The statistic or research results from both NGOs: Similar to what we coded for dependent variables but from PR perspective, that is, any research done by Greenpeace or WWF and published in the news releases. Q4 from our codebook for press releases was to test it.

The types of environmental issues mentioned: Greenpeace and WWF put their effort in many environmental fields, including food, climate, fresh water, wildlife, forest, oceans, plastic wastes, energy, air pollution and others. The coder would read through every press releases and judge which category it mainly belongs to. Q7 from our codebook for press releases was to test it.

Any “news event” related to environmental issues: The definition of a news event is as what just mentioned in the dependent variables part. Not only passively wait for being interviewed because of a news event, NGOs will also publish their statements or opinion according to the news topics. Q6 from our codebook for press releases was to test it.

By observing these DVs and IVs, the study intends to find out the bond between these press releases and media coverages, and to what extent can specific elements from PR materials influence news agenda. Additionally, the coding will be done by the author herself using the survey tool Qualtrics after completing the data collection and piloting. Please refer to the appendices for these two coding schemes.

Analytic Procedures

The Chi-square test of independence

When the variables are nominal, The Chi-square test is one of the best options of statistics for testing hypotheses, it asks “levels (or categories) of the variables to be mutually exclusive” , that is, “a particular subject fits into one and only one level of each of the variables” (McHugh,

2013, p.143). Hence, it is suitable for testing all three hypotheses in this study, to analyze the influence of the independent variables- NGO’s press releases, which includes the elements of research results and statistics, the quotes in the articles and various types of the environmental issues. All these variables are nominal and belong to categories, thus use the Chi-square (χ2) can provide information “not only on the significance of any observed differences, but also provides detailed information on exactly which categories account for any differences found”

(McHugh, 2013, p.145).

Results

The literature discussed above pointed out that NGOs are often mentioned in news as a complement of a story (Powers,2015). For example, commenting or responding to some news events like policy debates, urgent environmental crisis or natural disasters, and “quotability” is a substantial quality for a news release to be used in the news content. Therefore, the first set of hypotheses assume that the frequency of WWF and Greenpeace’s opinion quoted in the news coverages will be positively related to the possibility it mentioned as a supplement of the certain news events in those coverages. (Hypothesis 1a & 1b)

After running a Chi-Square tests, we found that the quotes from WWF had a statistically significant influence on how often the organizations mentioned as a supplement of certain news events, χ2 (1, N = 292) = 7.040, p < .05. Hypothesis 1a was supported. However, opposite result can be seen for Greenpeace, how often the organization’s opinion quoted did not have positive association with the possibility it mentioned as a supplement of news events, X2 (1, N

= 292) = 2.975, p > .05. Hypothesis 1b was rejected. That is to say, the contents or opinion produced by WWF were more likely to be directly used in the media coverages compared to 17 that of Greenpeace, and to comment and respond to the news events such as hot issues and debates was one of the major reasons it obtained the media exposure from The Guardian and

The Telegraph.

Table 1. Hypothesis 1a

Table 2. Hypothesis 1b

The next hypothesis puts emphasis on the correlation between environmental issues discussed in the news articles and press releases, with the categories of food, climate, fresh Water, wildlife, forest, oceans, plastic wastes, energy, air pollution and others. As figure 1 shows, they seem to have similar tendency in terms of the selection of the environmental topics, for example, wildlife, plastic wastes and climate were the top three issues mentioned the most in either news

18 articles or press releases while fresh water is the least. However, when further performed a chi- square test to see whether the salience of issues in press releases from Greenpeace or WWF is positively related to the salience of issues in news articles, the results demonstrate that there is no statistical significance between these two variables, X2 (81, N = 150) = 85.635, p > .05. In other words, the types of the environmental issues reported by the chosen media did not truly reflect the selection of environmental issues in the press releases. Hypothesis 2 was rejected.

Figure 1.

The percentage of the environmental issues mentioned 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0

News coverages Press releases

Table 3. Hypothesis 2

Finally, hypothesis 3a and hypothesis 3b aim at knowing would the statistics or research results provided by WWF and Greenpeace in the press releases influence the prominence of their

19 research mentioned in the media coverage. Surprisingly, different results generated between

WWF and Greenpeace when conducting the Chi-Square Tests, the former has no significant influence on the news articles , X2 (1, N = 149) = 1.132, p > .05, while the later has, X2 (1, N

= 149) = 12.487, p < .001. That is to say, the research results and background information offered by Greenpeace in their press releases were more likely to affect the frequency those results cited in the news articles compared to that of WWF. Therefore, hypothesis 3a was rejected yet hypothesis 3b was supported.

Table 4. Hypothesis 3a WWF

Table 5. Hypothesis 3b Greenpeace

Discussion and Conclusion

This research inspected the impact of several variables to find out how can environmental

NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF advocate for their ideals by influencing the news agenda of news outlets via press releases, one of the formats of information subsidies. The finding shows that the opinion from PR professionals and other staff of the organizations and the statistics or research results provided by the NGOs could somehow help environmental NGOs building the news agenda. Nonetheless, the sorts of environmental issues dealt in the press releases did not reflect on the issues media covered as Hypothesis 2 expected. The inferences of these findings are discussed below.

The human testimony from PR professionals and NGO workers

The support of Hypothesis 1 shows that, words from PR practitioner and other NGO staff such as researchers or organizers of a campaign, do have the strength to shape the news agenda, especially for WWF, compared to Greenpeace, comments from them were more likely to be directly used in the media coverages as a supplement of the news events. The author speculates that it is because of the characteristic differences between these two organizations, to be specific,

WWF working more in fieldworks and conservation projects, whereas Greenpeace has focused on campaign activities. According to the classification of NGOs by the World Bank, NGOs can be sorted into two general categories: “Operations NGOs” and “Advocacy NGO”. The former like WWF, works on the design and operation of the projects while the later such as Greenpeace, aiming at promoting ideals and influencing public opinions and the policies (“World Bank”, n.d.). Thus, when there were news events like debates of environmental policy or natural disasters happened, journalists tend to go for the organization which can contribute more comprehensive explanation towards the topics. Moreover, an online article explores WWF’s communication strategy indicates that, the organization “adopts an expert-based rather than a seniority-oriented approach to its spokesperson policy” (Lam, 2014, para. 9). In other words, 21 instead of picking a senior from the organization as the spokesperson, WWF assigns who are

“technical experts and possess in-depth knowledge in their respective fields” to represent them

(Lam, 2014, para. 10), such as scientists or researcher in the environmental fields.

However, just as Powers (2015) states, NGOs are often “mentioned later in news articles and after other news sources”, they usually mentioned to supply views and background information on other news events which were not directly related to the organizations. From another perspective, this phenomenon also gives NGOs the opportunity to increase their visibility in the news, hence, it is not rare to see that most of the big nonprofit organizations have press section on their official sites and specially assigned person to emergency response to important issues or policies. This results also can be explained by the concept of McManus (1994)'s model of market-driven journalism, “Sources depend on the news media to carry their information to the public; in turn, the media depend on sources to supply them with information.” (Curtin,

1999, p56)

It is also worth noting that, the results does not mean that Greenpeace did not attract media’s attention, since hypothesis 1 only test the correlation between quote and the frequency it used as a “supplement” of the news events, we do not know whether Greenpeace was actually covered more in the coverages as a “main character” or not, which means it might be reported even when no other news events happened.

The issues in news releases and in news media content

As mentioned before, many scholars see issue salience as the core of agenda building theory

(Dutton,1986; Nelson, 2000; Hallahan, 2001; Kiousis et al.,2006), people’s awareness of the issue is the key for journalists to report. Hence, hypothesis 2 focus on the correlation between the environmental issues discussed in the press releases and news articles and found out that they were not positively associated with each other. In detail, the frequency of the

22 environmental issues dealt in the news coverages from the greatest to the least are wildlife, plastic wastes, climate, forest, oceans, air pollution, energy, food, fresh Water; And that of press releases are wildlife, climate, plastic wastes, air pollution, forest, oceans, energy, fresh Water, food. It can be seen that the tendency of issue selection seems pretty much alike, but the analytical result failed to support it. Reversely, it reveals that what displayed in the press releases did not really match with which of the environmental issues reported in the news articles, it might be a coincidence to have such similar tendency.

To look in detail, although the top three environmental issues discussed in either news coverages or press releases are both wildlife, plastic wastes and climate, the difference in other selection of topics might be the reason that hypothesis 2 was rejected. This result might be explained by issue publics theory, as mentioned previously, people are more aware of and willing to be well-informed by issues that are relevant to them, in contrast, they do not care much about issues that are not that important in their life, and public’s attitude towards issues can influence what and how the media reports (Iyengar, 1990; Krosnick & Telhami, 1995;

Brenes, Wojcieszak, Lelkes, & de Vreese,2017). To put it another way, some of the issues

Greenpeace or WWF attempted to promote might be different with what the readers of the news outlets really concerned, thus they are less covered in the articles.

The statistics or research results provided by NGOs

Talking about NGOs as sources, previous literatures asserted that credibility is an indispensable quality for them to build trust with media and help journalists to save the cost of gathering the news and fact checking, and in return, NGOs can also obtain more media exposure (Kwenda,

2013; Mcpherson 2016). NGOs can affect news agenda through supply of “background information” like statistics or reliable results from research conducted by experts (Krøvel, 2012).

Based on this, hypothesis 3a and 3b examined the correlation between the salience of research results given by WWF and Greenpeace in the press releases and the salience of research from 23 both NGOs in news media content. The research results refer to statistics, annual reports and investigations published by the organizations.

Surprisingly, different results displayed in our findings, the research and data provided by

Greenpeace had high association with the news content, while that of WWF did not. It is different from what the author expected because as our previous discussion, as an environmental organization, Greenpeace has focused more on campaign activities, whereas

WWF puts their effort into fieldworks and conservation projects. Therefore, we speculated that

WWF would show more influence on research than Greenpeace, yet the findings were opposite to it, which is interesting and should view together with the results of hypothesis 1a and 1b.

Since the human testimony from WWF is proved to be used more to respond the news events than that of Greenpeace, whereas the research results from Greenpeace appeared more in the news content than that of WWF, it might related to our inference in the first part of discussion that Greenpeace was actually gaining media exposure as “a main character” in the coverages instead of being mentioned because of other news events. It could be their results of investigations or campaign activities which draw media’s attention, but in this study we cannot confirm this and it is worth researching in the future.

Limitation and future research

Firstly, the approach quantitative content analysis has its weaknesses, mainly in the procedure of sampling and coding, it still cannot totally reduce bias since “developing the coding scheme and coding always involve interpretation, even of manifest content.” (Rose, 2015, p7) Hence, the bias may exists during our coding process, for example, sometimes there were more than one environmental issues mentioned in a news article, the coder had to judge which category it mainly belongs to, and it may not always being accurate. Besides, take a phrase or a paragraph out of a context may causes misinterpretation, the meaning behind a text might be neglected if it is not mentioned, “in some situations what is omitted may be as significant as what is 24 included.” As a result, it would be hard for a study using content analysis to offer explanations for “particular findings where the source of the explanation lies outside of the text itself” (Rose,

2015, p7). For instance, we also could not interpret the wording in news articles or press releases in this study.

Secondly, there are still many dependent variables from press releases that can influence news content, except those already mentioned in the findings, dramatic factors like graphics, celebrity, campaign activities and so on can also be examined in the future research. Moreover, except press releases, there are many other formats of information subsidies that can be considered within the context of agenda building, such as press conferences, video, interviews and so on.

Especially in the digital era, social media plays a vital role in communication process, running multiple social media accounts becoming a must do for many PR practitioners, thus future study should further investigate the impact of information subsidies from social media on news agenda.

Overall, despite the fact that the findings are limited, this paper is still informative on the subject of how can press releases from environmental NGOs as sources affect news agenda by conducting quantitative content analysis as method.

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Appendix1.

Codebook for news coverages

1. What is the article ID number? ____ 2. What date is the article published? ____ 3. What is the media company? 01 The Guardian

02 The Telegraph

4. Which association does the article mentioned?

01 WWF

02 Greenpeace

03 Both

5. Any opinion from WWF quoted in the article?

01 Yes

02 No

6. Any opinion from Greenpeace quoted in the article?

01 Yes

02 No

7. Are any statistic or research from WWF or Greenpeace being mentioned in the article?

01 Yes

02 No

8. WWF or Greenpeace mentioned because of certain “news events” related to environmental issues happened at that period. News events refer to hot topics such as policy debates, natural disasters, corruption scandals and so on.

01 Yes

02 No

9.What area of the environmental issues mentioned or discussed in the article? Multiple selections accepted.

01 Food

02 Climate

03 Fresh Water

04 Wildlife

05 Forest

06 Oceans

07 Plastic wastes

08 Energy

09 Air pollution

10 Others: ____

Appendix2.

Codebook for press releases from WWF and Greenpeace

1. What is the article ID number? ____ 2. What date is the article published? ____ 3. Which of the INGOs published the articles? 01 WWF

02 Greenpeace

4. Does WWF release any result of research or mention any statistic from their research in the article?

01 Yes

02 No

5. Does Greenpeace release any result of research or mention any statistic from their research in the article?

01 Yes

02 No

6. WWF or Greenpeace published the article because of certain “news events” related to environmental issues happened at that period. News events refer to hot topics such as policy debates, natural disasters, corruption scandals and so on.

01 Yes

02 No

7. What area of the environmental issues mentioned or discussed in the article? Multiple selections accepted.

01 Food

02 Climate

03 Fresh Water

04 Wildlife

05 Forest

06 Oceans

07 Plastic wastes

08 Energy

09 Air pollution

10 Others: ____

Appendix3. Tables

H1a & H1b

H3a

H3b