Economic and Social Roles of Companies in the Mass Media The Impact Media Visibility Has on Businesses' Being Recognized as Economic and Social Actors

Businesses play an important social role in society that goes beyond their traditional economic role. The way in which these roles are carried out and communicated to the stakeholders can influence the company's corporate reputation. The first step in constructing a corporate reputation is corporate visibility. The mass media plays an important role in developing corporate visibility. Media visibility has a significant influence on public opinion and contributes strongly to forming companies' corporate reputation. The main aim of this article is to test the level of visibility of companies in the media as well as the attributes (economic and/or social) assigned to the companies. The author presents the results of the research done on the media visibility of companies belonging to the Spanish Stock Exchange in the four most important newspapers in Spain. Two basic results were obtained: Larger companies, with good reputations and oriented to mass consumption, have more visibility in newspapers, and companies are basically presented as economic and not social actors in society.