CORPORATE IDENTITY BUILDING OF UNIVERSITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: AN ANALYSIS ON UNIVERSITY WEBSITES

Corporate websites are one of the most effective tools for the organization to communicate with its target audience. In addition to being effective communication tools, corporate websites also support corporate communications and help the formation of corporate identity. Corporate identity is a completely planned process in which the character of the corporation is expressed. Determining the extent of the usage of these tools and applications in the websites of corporates is important in terms of presenting the current situation and making predictions for the future. Universities use web sites to communicate effectively, efficiently and quickly with their internal and external stakeholders and hence make use of websites as promotional tools. In this study, the websites of the universities ranked top ten according to URAP 2020- 2021 (University Ranking by Academic Performance) have been analyzed with content analysis method in the context of cultural identity dimensions. Study results have shown that, applications about corporate communications and its tools and the visual elements of corporate identity take place in all of the corporate websites; the websites are tried to be made interesting, especially with animated images; the elements about corporate culture take place in faculty home pages; the elements about corporate behavior is featured with the purpose of information after alteration or activity; the senior management staff are featured more on the component of corporate structure and the industry identity components of universities have similar programs hence it can be said that they gain industry identity. For future studies, conducting a comparative analysis on private and public universities and a comparative analysis on the context of different themes of the websites of the universities in our country and the universities operating abroad can be presented as suggestions.