The representation of student well-being in German Higher Educetion Institutions' websites

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) forward well-being as a commitment “in the sense of equipping people with the resources and skills to make a meaningful contribution to society” (Wisker, 2011: 5). It is considered as “the promotion of the physical, social, and psychological health of students and staff [that incorporates an] understanding of citizenship and respect and of personal, social, and spiritual development or fulfillment” (Carrol, 2011: 32). The issue of well-being also emerges in universities’ websites, which are conceived to communicate the university’s vision and mission in today’s highly competitive societies in order to influence prospective students’ choices (Graham, 2013; Meyer, 2008; Saichaie & Morphew, 2014). The issue of well-being representation as a marketization strategy to entice prospective students and be competitive in the global arena seems to be underinvestigated. The present study is focussed on the investigation of how German HEIs represent their commitment to students’ well-being to be more attractive in the global arena. As a case study, the websites of the German Master’s Degrees in International Relations taught in English and German have been collected and investigated. The textual and visual components of the selected websites have been explored with reference to the content analysis (Saichaie & Morphew 2014), the multimodal analysis (Zollo, 2016) and the lexical analysis (Rutter et al. 2016). The results of the investigation have shown that the promotion of students’ well-being is at the core of the communication strategy of German HEIs websites, which represent students as beneficiaries of the actions devoted to the realization of their well-being and promoted by academia.