Entrepreneurship and mass media: audiences' perceptions of entrepreneurship stories in mass media

Entrepreneurship has received increasingly attention, both politically and scientifically, during the last couple of decades. After the Oil Crises in the 1970s, it was acknowledge that large businesses could no longer be seen as the sole driver of economic development. A stronger focus was devoted to entrepreneurship, new business formation and the role of small business growth. Since then, politically, many resources have been devoted to promote entrepreneurship. A common characteristic of many Danish political initiatives (besides their purpose of improving entrepreneurial capacity) is that they intend to function through secondary socialisation. They try to change, reinforce or shape the values of the Danish population in order promote the commitment and desire to become an entrepreneur. Many of these initiatives work through mass media - either directly or indirectly - and are, thus, based on the assumption that mass media might be able to influence Danish peoples' vocational choices. Intuitively, assuming that mass media influence peoples' decisions through secondary socialisation is reasonable. However, theory on mass media states that this simple linear relationship between mass media and its audiences' decisions is questionable. There might be a relationship, but it is not simple and linear. Mass media is important for every person in order to define the world in which they live and in order to define themselves, but it is not reasonable to think that we understand the role of media, if we imagine a simple linear effect from mass media on its audiences. Previous research on mass media and entrepreneurship is more or less non-existent - only very few studies have dealt with this issue. From a scientific point of view and especially from a political point of view this is critical. Therefore, there seems to be a need to explore the mechanism(s) between mass media stories about entrepreneurship and the nature of entrepreneurship taken place in a country. In this study, we explore how mass media communication about entrepreneurship is perceived by its audience - or more precisely: how mass media communication about entrepreneurship is perceived by different people?