Abstract
Today a university cannot build and promote its identity unless it communicates successfully on the Internet. Internet presence is a challenging issue that requires thorough analysis. A communications audit that makes competent assessment of a university’s Internet presence is necessary to ensure successful communication by universities on the Internet. This communications audit includes: assessment of Web site traffic of a university, assessment of user activity on the university’s social networking sites, assessment of frequency of mention of the university on expert and educational Web portals, and justification for the university’s presence in virtual cities and Web blogs. This research explores different techniques of assessment of universities’ Internet presence: content analysis, press clippings, and Internet services such as Google PR, Alexa Ranking, IQBuzz, and others. This research presents an analysis of several universities: Tomsk State University (Tomsk, Russia), Tomsk Polytechnic University (Tomsk, Russia), Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia), Harvard University (Massachusetts, USA), Oxford University (Oxford, England), and other universities. The technique developed for auditing a university’s communications includes an invariable component, which consists of assessment of universities’ Internet presence and their exposure in scientific and educational portals and analysis of their social media profiles, and a variable component, which is determined by the researcher and depends on the objective of the audit.
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Notes
Beaudoin (2002) The Management Company's Image. Public relations: the Subject and Skill. INFRA-M, P. 116–122.
Geographical (country, region, area); socio-demographic (age, sex, income level, profession, education); psychographic (activity, interests, opinion, preferable behavior type, lifestyle); cultural (ideals and values) (Pocheptsov 2000: 161–167).
Acronym for Search Engines Optimization—optimization for search engines.
Runet—part of the Internet in Russian. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82.
Tweet—synonyms: message, post, publication, note, update, status—short messages in Twitter. Volume of a message cannot exceed 140 characters.
Monitoring—a research method allowing study of the dynamics of social processes over a specified period of time.
Content analysis—a research method of quality and quantity analysis of a text.
Publicity—being known, popularity created by free placement of information in mass media attracting audience’s interest.
Digital content—any type of content that exists in the form of digital data.
Press clipping—selection of materials of analyzed Internet resources on particular subject matter for a certain period of time.
Meme—an idea, image, or any other object of non-material world. An Internet meme is an invented character as an information carrier (texts, links, etc.), usually communicated by users to each other through the Web.
Advergaming—advertisement + game—a computer game specially designed for promotion of goods, service, an organization, or territory.
Runet (Runet—the first syllable «ru» means a code of Russia, the Russian language or the domain name, and the «net», means Network) is a part of WorldNet, whose characteristic feature is the mandatory Russian language without the obligatory binding to Russia. That is, Runet is the common name for the Internet resources in Russian, which Russian-speaking citizens of any country can use. There is a perception that Runet is a collection of various Web sites and resources that are located in the domain areas: ru and rf. But it is quite a narrow approach. In fact, there are more domain zones where we can find Russian-language sites. Therefore, when we speak about the technical part, the only fair criteria by which Internet resources can “relate or not relate to Runet” are the language and the Russian Cyrillic character set (http://www.e-xecutive.ru/wiki/index.php/).
Dominant coalition—the term introduced by Grunig and Todt (1984), for a circle of people having power and influence on strategic decisions of a company.
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We are grateful to Ekaterina Polyanskaya and Jean Kollantai, Tomsk State University, for their assistance with language and style.
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Bychkova, M.N., Okushova, G.A. Methods of analysis of a modern university’s presence in the Internet communicative space. AI & Soc 32, 89–100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0648-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0648-5