Samenvatting

Public organizations delivering public services are the subjects of approximately a third of the daily news in the quality press. This article investigates the media frames in which public organizations are portrayed and also investigates the direct and indirect strategies that public organizations use to influence those frames. The analysis is relevant because public organizations are subjected to decision making processes by politicians that are informed by the frames in media stories. The article is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis of media reporting, and focus-groups and interviews with senior officials from multiple Dutch and Australian public service providers. The analysis reveals that public organizations deploy both direct strategies via communication as well as indirect strategies (such as networking with journalists and applied research) in order to influence media framing. The interaction between news media and public organizations is depicted as a struggle for control over media messages, where journalists and politicians often get the upper hand but where public organizations have specific traits that may serve to generate specific frames.