This study evaluates the influence of ranking reports on university brands' credibility and perceived differentiation. Signaling theory is applied to link ranking with credibility and perceived differentiation. An experimental approach was used to collect data and to test the hypothesis. Data was collected from 328 participants in the UK regarding…

Amid debates about global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs' media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine 135 publicly available visual media (photographs) in the Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) websites to uncover the…

Institutional league tables, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, have become part of the global higher education landscape. This article discusses findings from a longitudinal study examining four Australian universities over a fifteen year period which traces how international rankings have come to be articulated in university…

A great deal has been written about the rise of the world-class university and global university rankings over the past two decades. Much of this work focuses on either the efficacy of the indicators used to measure world classness or on the purposes they serve regarding student choice in an international market. However, less attention has been…

Reviews of editorial practices and academic studies have shown that journalists often rely on organization websites--and online newsrooms in particular--to inform news stories. Yet, at a time when many academics are called upon as experts by the media, university newsrooms have been ignored. To fill this gap, this study assesses newsrooms of…

This paper analyzes several foundational concepts and questions regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR). Its primary contribution is a statistical examination of relationships between CSR and "Newsweek's" 2012 Green Rankings using forensic-based financial and accounting measures. We also replicate a previous study and introduce…

Drawing on the concepts of mediatisation and celebrification, this paper analyses how the Nobel Prize is used as a proxy of excellence by the 'Big Three' university rankers and top-ranked universities. Ranking advisories, university leadership at top-ranked institutions, and Nobel Prize adjudication committees are overwhelming from the same…

Conventional wisdom holds that research-productive faculty are also the finest instructors. But, is this commonly held belief correct? In the current study, the notion that faculty scholarship exhibits a positive association with teaching evaluations is investigated. Reflecting the data structure of faculty nested within university, the current…

This paper will examine the Times Higher Education's (THE) World University Rankings as a corporate media product. A number of empirical studies have critiqued the methodology of the THE, yet individuals, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and governments continue to use them for decision-making. This paper analyses the influence of…

Previous research has adopted various methods to assess the relative quality of academic marketing journals. This study, as a replication and extension of Chen and Huang (2007), introduces the Author Affiliation Index (AAI) as an alternative approach to assessing marketing journal quality. The AAI is defined as the ratio of articles authored by…