Abstract:

The Covid 19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on university students’ mental health, thus also affecting academic engagement and achievement in higher learning institutions. One of the ways universities can help affected students is to contribute to strengthening of their resilience, since various studies have shown that this trait can greatly help students to deal with mental illness and stress. This can be done through the deployment of various resilience-enhancing tools and processes. Internet-based interventions are especially popular post-pandemic, given the ongoing limitations, and the general changes brought about by social distancing during the pandemic. While some of these online-based interventions will be classroom-based, universities are very likely to also use external communications (such as their websites and social media) in order to promote resilience among their students. This paper aims to analyse and pinpoint which are the types of resilience-promoting messages that a sample of 15 universities are using in their external online communications, especially on their websites and social media.

Keywords:

Resilience, communication, social media, pandemic, messages, university.