Lietuvos įvaizdžio kūrimas internete ; Creating the Image of Lithuania in the Internet

Abstract

It is not the first time when talk about the Lithuanian image appears. Renaldas Gudauskas was one of the initiators who has offered some recommendations about it in 1998. He has described the situation about Lithuanian image as something "in-between unknown and perspective country". Not so much have changed after nine years, so Renaldas Gudauskas' thoughts are relevant now. Nation image is getting more and more important nowadays. There was a notion in Simon Anholt Nation Brand Index 2006 Q4 Report that "globalization means that countries compete with each other for the attention, respect and trust of investors, tourists, […] the media, and the governments of other nations, so a powerful and positive national image provides a crucial competitive advantage". It is essential for countries to understand how they are seen by publics around the world; how their achievements and failures, their assets and their liabilities, their people and their products are reflected in their brand image. A high level of information about other countries access and almost unlimited access to different kind of information about one's own country brings some unexpected features while creating nation's image in the global information society. It is impossible to create the nation's image in such kind of society when using one-way communication process. It is feedback maintenance that is one of the most important parts of nation's image creating process. Internet is a communication channel that is able to provide and effectively manage the feedback. Also it is internet that provides a wide variety of other effective means for nation's image creation. So the object of the Diploma work is the creation of Lithuanian image in the internet. The main goal of the Diploma work is to inspect the features and possibilities of creating nation's image in the internet and to provide the recommendations concerning Lithuanian image to Lithuanian website developers. The main tasks to achieve the goal are: to discuss the conception of image, its importance and the principles of its creation; to determine the communication means and channels that can be used to create the image of nation; to analyze the internet channel features and possibilities and internet importance in the context of international communication; to overlook the recent situation of the Lithuanian image; to analyze the main websites of the nations all over the world. There was a method of literary analysis used in the theoretical part of this work. The methods of quantitative and also qualitative content analysis were used in the practical part of this work. The quantitative content analysis was used to gather the data about what kind of information is being published in the nations' websites, what means are being used and what is the level of interactivity. This was a preparatory analysis. And the qualitative content analysis was used to analyze in detail the information and the way of presentation of five best websites. Countries use internet to present their reaction to the events, to announce their point of view, to maintain the relations with the publics all over the world, to present their interests and politics. So the country's website is one of the best means to create its image in the internet. While analyzing the websites of different countries it became clear that many countries do not manage to use the possibilities of the internet properly. Multimedia is used very shortly, the level of websites' interactivity is very low.