| This project examines how media framing, uses and gratifications theory and relationship marketing have all played important roles in the way the public, as well as editors, have viewed e-commerce Web sites and the virtual market place. A framing analysis was applied to major newspaper articles with the purpose of understanding how the media framed e-commerce Web sites and if the uses and gratifications e-commerce users were represented in the stories. Sixty articles were sampled from a variety of U.S. newspapers to understand how the media portray the industry. The results found an overwhelming number of representations of users' uses and gratifications. In addition, the study found typically the stories are neutral or positively framed and the placement of the articles is rarely a centerpiece of the newspaper. As a result, stories continue to focus more on business transactions and on money issues surrounding e-commerce Web sites. |
