Blogging for Reputation : An analysis of how Swedish universities address different governing system via social media

Abstract

Universities are exposed to a variety of external forces that influence the way they are managed and organized. In this paper we examine how these principles are given space in the way universities communicate. We do this by analyzing how the university management - in this case Swedish universities' Vice-chancellors – describe, promote and explain their organizations via official blogs. The paper builds on a framework where university governance is understood as based on a relationship between state, profession and market, and as driven by three forms of social judgments - legitimacy, status and reputation. From a total of fourteen VC blogs, 1330 posts are analyzed according to three sets of arguments: 1) legitimacy arguments driven by political outcome; 2) status arguments driven by professional values and boundaries; and 3) reputation arguments driven by market consequences. The results reflect a dominance of reputation aspects, highlighting the centrality of market principles in communication and university governance. ; Organized freedom: university autonomy and the higher education and research reforms in Sweden