The Identity of University Social Responsibility on the Websites of the Universities of the Autonomous Region of Madrid (Spain) and the State of Puebla (Mexico), As a Tool of Grassroots Public Diplomacy

Abstract

The identity of the universities is one more piece to consider inside the puzzle of the grassroots public diplomacy. University social responsibility is not well exploited on university websites. This is the main conclusion we have reached following a comparative study of the websites of the universities of the Autonomous Region of Madrid (Spain) and those of the universities of the State of Puebla, including public, private, and Catholic Church institutions. All the universities of the Madrid region and 92.5% of those consulted in the State of Puebla have a website, but none of them gives an explicit reference on its homepage that operations are performed within all occupational aspects in accordance with the realm of university social responsibility. It would therefore be fair to say that there is no evidence of optimal exploitation of university social responsibility on the websites. When this must be considered as one element that it is necessary to include in the communicative frame of reference to obtain mutual understanding, stable, and beneficial relations for all the parts.

Measuring environmental website communications in Latin American universities: multimodal and ecolinguistic benchmarking

“…There is a number of investigations on how universities address corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability issues on their websites (Arceo, 2018; Ismail, 2019; Hasim et al , 2018; Joseph et al , 2013; Katiliūtẻ et al , 2014; Nejati et al , 2011). Special attention has been given to annual reports (Azizi et al , 2018; Fonseca et al , 2011; Hinson et al , 2015; Siboni et al , 2013).…”

Studying similarities and differences in higher education organisations based on their websites – comparative methodological approaches and research potential

“…Website differences are seen as the result of demographic and geographic location (e.g. Arceo, 2018 ; Farrugia & Lane, 2013 ; Griffin et al, 2017 ), university characteristics in terms of student body composition (e.g. Bray & Sweatt, 2018 ; Graham et al, 2017 ), institutional types (e.g.…”

“…As indicated previously, only eight out of 60 analysed articles compare university websites both across institutions and countries, giving an indication of the additional theoretical and methodological challenges that come with an additional comparative layer in the analysis. Some of the articles do compare countries, without any particular cross-country comparative theoretical framework that aims to explain social, economic and cultural differences between societies (Abu Shawar 2015 ; Arceo, 2018 ; Samkin & Schneider, 2014 ; Tomaskova, 2017 ). In such articles variance across countries is explained in a purely descriptive and phenomenological way and the purpose of cross-country sampling of cases seems redundant and/or done for pragmatic reasons (e.g.…”

State of the art of university social responsibility: a standardized model and compared self-diagnosis in Latin America

“…There is a common approach within the existing literature: reviewing secondary sources of information to study USR. In this context, some studies have been reviewing literature (Ruiz-Corbella and Bautista-Cerro, 2016;Fern andez et al, 2012;Larr an-Jorge and Andrades-Peña, 2017) based on an analysis of universities' online and virtual information and their USR strategies Garde S anchez et al, 2013;Arceo, 2018;P aunescu et al, 2017). Alternatively, many studies have conducted in-field analyses by asking university students about their perceptions on USR (Ahmad, 2012;Gaete, 2016;Ayala-Rodr ıguez et al, 2017).…”

“…, 2012; Larrán-Jorge and Andrades-Peña, 2017) based on an analysis of universities' online and virtual information and their USR strategies (Esfijani and Chang, 2012; Garde Sánchez et al. , 2013; Arceo, 2018; Păunescu et al. , 2017).…”