The term “publicity sphere” derives from the concept “public sphere” (Habermas, 1991, p. 398) with a “publicity” tweak. World-class universities use media not only for community-building, which “flagship universities” have been doing in the local higher education systems as their service to the society or nation (Altbach & Balán, 2007), but also for marketing and publicity activities aiming at reputation-building for recruitment or fundraising purposes, among others. Even though not all globally-ranked “world-class” universities are driven by global recruitment ambitions, those with income-generation purpose either via fees or taxation to the country, have both stronger motivation and financial strength to engage in global publicity activities. The resources involved are believed to be substantial although it remains difficult to quantify the investment because of inaccessible financial data in many cases and the lack of an overview of all relevant activities.

Although increasing attention has been paid to the return of investment (ROI) of university marketing and recruitment activities in recent years, costeffectiveness assessment remains a huge challenge given the lengthy processes of “reputation-building” activities, even if narrowed down to specific (re)branding activities (e.g., changing a logo), as well as the difficulties to prove the causal relationship between the multifaceted publicity activities and the quantifiable outputs (e.g., the number of students recruited). Such challenges only increase with the digital and visual turn of organisational communication (Bell, Warren, & Schroeder, 2014, p. 2) when universities lose control of their representation in the global digital space. Damage assessment must also be taken into consideration critically. Attempts to tighten the control of university representation through regulations and legal actions may backfire with negative publicity or weaken the emotional attachment of the stakeholders to the university, which is counterproductive to the purpose of (re)branding.

In order to assess the ROI of university reputation-building activities, an allrounded view of the processes, activities and stakeholders involved are crucial before identifying where the costs may arise and how effectiveness of such activities should be defined in the higher education context. This thesis therefore starts with a global comparative analysis of representation and ends with the suggestions for examining the processes and dynamics between stakeholders in reputation management which is essentially perception management beyond control.

University communication has evolved into a niche research area like corporate communication with the growing attention and volume of academic research dedicated to the topic. The author argues that context matters in university communication. By borrowing and adapting a mix of concepts including isomorphism, strategic planning, branding, rebranding, and framing from other disciplines, this thesis contributes to the contextualisation of these concepts in the higher education sector based on empirical findings. Particularly in relation to the complex organisational and governance structure of universities, the thesis argues for the need to examine processes with a longitudinal approach or collaborative research design pegged to different aspects of a university communication process. A framing model for higher education research has been proposed for this purpose. In addition, the thesis contributes to further articulation of the above-said concepts which may be useful for multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary conceptual development applicable not only to higher education but also other disciplines.

This thesis was prepared from mid-2014 to mid-2022 on a part-time basis. Except for the last paper on the theorisation of framing, the studies were presented in international conferences for timely dissemination and discussions in the higher education research community. Much has happened around university communication in the past eight years. I hope you enjoy both the conceptual discussions, as well as the changes I captured during this long journey of academic inquiry.

Kwan Heung Lam ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Fachbereich Sinologie an der Universität Trier.

ISBN: 978-3-86856-029-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.53174//UKAS/LAM/2023