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From “minimalists” to “professional all-rounders”: Typologizing Swiss universities’ communication practices and structures

Fürst, Silke; Vogler, Daniel; Schäfer, Mike S; Sörensen, Isabel Heller (2024). From “minimalists” to “professional all-rounders”: Typologizing Swiss universities’ communication practices and structures. Communications : European Journal of Communication Research:Epub ahead of print.

Abstract

In the past two decades, the public communication of universities has become more important and received increased scholarly attention. While many studies have focused on individual university communicators (micro level) or all such practitioners in one country (macro level), our study analyzes organizational differences. It is the first-ever study to typologize universities’ communication practices and structures at the organizational level across an entire country. Based on a survey of communication practitioners in the central communication offices at all universities in Switzerland and using hierarchical cluster analysis, we classify 37 universities into four types of communicating universities: minimalists, well-resourced competitors, specialized strategists, and professional all-rounders. Those types are further characterized on the basis of official statistics. The analysis shows that the four types of universities differ considerably in their communication patterns and organizational characteristics and that the amount of resources available for communication is only loosely coupled with professional and strategic communication practices.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > Department of Communication and Media Research
06 Faculty of Arts > Institute for Research on the Public Sphere and Society
Dewey Decimal Classification:070 News media, journalism & publishing
Scopus Subject Areas:Social Sciences & Humanities > Communication
Social Sciences & Humanities > Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Uncontrolled Keywords:university public relations; science communication; strategic communication; higher education institutions; cluster analysis
Language:English
Date:1 August 2024
Deposited On:10 Oct 2024 09:34
Last Modified:31 Oct 2024 15:30
Publisher:De Gruyter
ISSN:0341-2059
OA Status:Hybrid
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2023-0147
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