Abstract:

The object of the present research is to study the institutional communication in web 2.0 from Portuguese Universities, once that web 2.0 is the main source of information which allows future and actual college students to choose the first and second cycle courses. So the way that institutional communication form the universities is done in the web is very important to capture the attention of students. On the other hand is also important to understand what actual college students think of the websites from these universities.

The studies that have been done by other researchers proved the importance of the web communication in the corporate websites (Hallahan, 2000: 223-224; Kent and Taylor, 1998: 321-322). The web 2.0 is a primary information source for different kinds of publics and has high degree of credibility (García, 2012: 32), furthermore allows interaction (Watson, Zinkhan and Pitt, 2000: 97). Díaz Sánchez et al., (2008: 279) refers the importance of the information that is updated and easy to reach which make also easy to the publics of the institution to make a decision.

The specific goal is to analyze the main focus of the website because each university has is own communicational strategy. The second objective of this study is to hear the opinion of target of this communication. The methodology applied to this research consists of content analysis of the websites from Portuguese universities followed from qualitative analyses to the results of a questionnaire applied to college students.

Keywords:

Web 2.0 Communication, Institutional Image, Portuguese Universities.