What’s a news media brand worth? Investigating the effect of cognitive brand representations on recipients’ quality assessment of news articles

News recipients evaluate the quality of journalistic news articles based on the article’s journalistic quality and its media brand. We argue that differentiating a news media’s brand identity from recipients’ cognitive associations with the brand offers a valuable perspective to understand quality evaluations in a more detailed way. We, therefore, specify the effect of media brands on the quality evaluation by including consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) as a mediator and investigate this mediation effect for five quality dimensions and a global quality measure. Based on a two (high vs low quality) x three (quality brand vs tabloid brand vs control group) between-subject experiment with 469 German respondents, we conducted structural equation modeling to investigate the direct effects of media brands on recipients’ quality assessment of news articles and the mediating effect via CBBE. We found mediation effects of the media brand via CBBE on all quality dimensions and the global measure. In addition, two direct media brand effects with opposite effect directions than expected could be identified. All results are discussed concerning further theory development and practical implications.