Title: Academic performance ranking and universities' Twitter use

Authors: Maddalena Della Volpe; Paolo Diana; Francesca Esposito; Maria Carmela Catone

Addresses: Department of Business Sciences, Management and Innovation Systems – DISA-MIS, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 – Fisciano, SA, Italy ' Department of Political and Social Studies – DISPS, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 – Fisciano, SA, Italy ' Department of Political and Communication Sciences – DSPSC, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 – Fisciano, SA, Italy ' Department of Sociology, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal, 696, 08034 – Barcelona, Spain

Abstract: This paper explores the different uses of the Twitter social media made by the top 100 universities in the world as classified by The 2018 Times Higher Education World Ranking (THE). The aim is to relate the THE Ranking performance indicators to the data from the Twitter activities of each university, in order to understand if the level of the universities' prestige affects their interacting communicative attitude on social media. Using statistical and quantitative methods, we succeeded in identifying three types of universities: megaphone universities, characterised by a one-way communication model, collaborative universities, concentrated on international openness, and social universities, more active and participative on Twitter than the others. Except for marketing purposes, universities reveal several obstacles in using social media. A more entrepreneurial vision of a university could allow recognising social media as an opportunity to enhance the circulation of knowledge flow and resources.

Keywords: higher education institutions; academic performance ranking; Times Higher Education World Ranking; university; social media; Twitter; network; web communication; principal component analysis; PCA; cluster analysis; entrepreneurial vision; entrepreneurial university; university business cooperation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2022.120416

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2022 Vol.27 No.1, pp.22 - 36

Received: 02 Oct 2019
Accepted: 31 Dec 2019
Published online: 19 Jan 2022 *

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