The role of the media in public accountability has often been discussed. This is especially the case for public sector organisations, whose accountability relations have changed in the shift from government to governance. In this paper, we develop a typology of the ways mass media are involved in public accountability processes. Media can stimulate actors to reflect on their behaviour, trigger formal accountability by reporting on the behaviour of actors, amplify formal accountability as they report on it or act as an independent and informal accountability forum. To explore the presence of these roles in practice, we focus on public sector organisations in the Netherlands. Our quantitative and qualitative analysis in the Netherlands suggests that the media primarily serve an indirect role in public accountability, either by invoking pre-emptive self-criticism in public organisations in anticipation of potential media scrutiny or by triggering formal accountability demands from MPs key words public accountability • media • public sector organisations SPECIAL ISSUE • Media and governance

Issue arenas, as places for societal discussions, have recently been studied as an important aspect of organizational environments. While a fundamental part of any issue arena is the distinction between active and passive actors, empirical analyses have mainly focused on active stakeholders. We approach issue arenas as communication networks in which active stakeholders discuss topics and involve passive stakeholders. Based on network theory, we introduce an automated method for mapping these issue arenas on Twitter. In particular, we combine manual coding of active stakeholders, and automated semantic network analysis of addressed, passive stakeholders and their topics of discussion. Empirically, we focus on the issue of bird flu affecting poultry farming in the Netherlands from 2015 to 2017 with a sample of 704 Twitter messages. Instead of pre-defining a set of stakeholders for the analysis, our approach to study communication networks in online settings allows for mapping issue arenas based on the stakeholders that communicate about the topic.

Social media platforms provide major opportunities for online activism and the emergence of digital counterpublics. Research on counterpublics has focused on actors and their narrative strategies aiming at deconstructing dominant discourses. Less attention has been paid to how the interplay between actors and platformspecific functions affects the configurations and therewith also the success of digital counterpublics. Existing studies mainly rely on determining up front which topics, actor characteristics, or arguments constitute hashtag activism and digital counterpublics. In contrast, our approach allows for an empirical identification based on how actors position themselves in an online debate toward other actors and their shared hashtags. We argue that online activism is co-constituted by actors and their usage of hashtags, actor mentions, and retweets. Applying a communicative network perspective allows for the integration of semantic and relational research traditions. We combine a recently developed automated network analysis method and content analysis to analyze two Twitter debates about animal welfare issues. Our results show that among Twitter users, citizens and environmental organizations formed a common cluster whereas media actors formed their own sub-clusters in both debates. The findings emphasize the central role of citizens for the configuration of digital counterpublics. The proposed approach can be further adapted and applied more widely for the analysis of online activism and debates.

This study assesses relationships between mass media orientations of communication professionals in organisations and their external communication strategies. We assume that mass media orientations within an organisation may affect an organisation's external communication strategies of bridging and buffering. A survey among 150 Dutch communication professionals working for both for-profit and public organisations as well as NPOs was conducted. Our study shows that preferences for specific communication strategies are related to different forms of media orientation. Having media attention as an organisational goal is more strongly associated with buffering, that is, one-way and symmetric communication, yet a more negative attitude toward the media also hinders an organisation from bridging activities. Overall, few differences between the three types of organisations regarding communication strategies and media orientations were found.

The aim of this study is to assess the mass media orientations of communication professionals: Is past media coverage for their organization related to the way communication professionals currently evaluate the importance of the media for their organizations? Following the debates on mediatization and reciprocal effects of media coverage, we assume that the amount and the tone of media coverage matter for the media orientations of communication professionals. In our analysis, we discern between actual and perceived characteristics of media attention. A quantitative content analysis was used to analyze the actual characteristics of media coverage for public and for-profit organizations as well as non-profit organizations. A survey was conducted to analyze the perceptions of coverage and mass media orientations of Dutch communication professionals working for those organizations. For public organizations, actual media favorability and perceived visibility turned out to be important predictors of the media orientation 'attention seeking'. The organizations were rather homogeneous in their relations between actual and perceived media coverage and the media orientation 'strategic impact'. This orientation was best predicted by volume of coverage, the substantiality of issues that were covered, and perceived visibility. Our results point at the importance of taking perceptive data into account when predicting media orientations. The amount and tone of media coverage about organizations varies widely between different organizations. Some companies show, whether intended or not, high levels of visibility, whereas some small public sector organizations can be considered as 'media virgins' (Andrews & Caren, 2010; Capriotti, 2007; Deacon & Monk, 2001; Schillemans, 2012). Several studies have examined factors that can account for these differences, such as the type of organization, its domain, its organizational capacity, and its media strategies (Capriotti, 2007; Reich, 2010). Even more interesting than focusing on differences in media visibility and the tone of coverage is the analysis of their consequences. Media coverage of an organization influences its reputation (

Studies have been made of eugenol on isolated tissues from man and laboratory animals, and on rats in uiuo. Eugenol inhibited prostaglandin synthesis, and reduced the tone of isolated gut muscle and myometrium. With rats in uiuo, the compound reduced the rate of intestinal transit, the intestinal accumulation of fluid induced by prostaglandin E,, and the diarrhoea induced by castor oil. Eugenol showed anti-inflammatory activity in the rat paw carrageenin oedema test.

Purpose-Visibility in the media is considered important for organizations, as it is alleged to affect their reputation, public legitimacy, and stakeholder relations. Strategies for media relations often discern corporations, public organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The media attention for those organizations is, however, often studied in isolation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of media positioning to compare media coverage for corporations, public organizations, and NGOs. Design/methodology/approach-A quantitative content analysis of the media coverage of 61 Dutch organizations was conducted. The comparison focused on three aspects of media positioning: prominence, context, and evaluation. Findings-Public organizations and corporations were most similar, whereas corporations and NGOs differed most strongly in their media positioning. Corporations appeared most prominently in the media. While corporations and public organizations were more often related to organizational issues, NGOs were more often linked to substantial issues and received more positive coverage. Originality/value-Insight into the content, amount, and tone of organizational media coverage is crucial for the formulation of public relations strategies by corporate communication professionals. The analysis shows whether and how the prominence, context, and evaluation differs among corporations, public organizations, and NGOs. The findings shed light on institutional factors that affect the visibility of different types of organizations, thus enabling future scholars in the field of visibility analyses in corporate communication to refine theories on drivers and characteristics of media coverage regarding different types of organizations.

Higher education quality is a vague, ambiguous, multiple, and essentially contested concept. Quality's contested character involves endless disputes about its proper use which makes it problematic to handle in governmental policies. Wittgenstein's notion of language games is used to understand how, through time, higher education quality is enacted in Dutch governmental policy texts, and how its uses are related to each other. The analysis depicts various quality games interacting with different policy contexts, which show multiple enactments of quality as a unified concept alongside more differentiated uses. In the policy games, quality is not the focal notion. The games center around the steering relationship with the institutions, which are placed 'at distance'. Through time, the games respond to increasing societal complexity and competition, and foster further flexibilization of institutional policies regarding quality and accessibility. In this management discourse with the institutions, quality is not used contrastively. It is concluded that quality's vague and contradictory enactments and valuations are not problematic in the institutional steering relationship. Recent policy texts however relate quality's 'proper use' to activities that enhance the student's learning process. This draws attention to paradoxes for a distancing government in its role as a universal actor with societal responsibilities.