Abstract:

The field of education implies the daily running of complex and layered communication processes in order to ensure the functioning of the system, and with the appearance of digital technologies, digital communication has become a part of everyday life in educational institutions. For schools, the most appropriate channel of communication with the public is a website, which also poses a legal obligation, in order to ensure visibility in the public space and improve the reputation of the school. The most important members of the public with which school employees interact are parents with whom relationships of partnership and collaboration are established. Since there is no established office or employee in the educational institutions in the Republic of Croatia in the field of public relations, it is teachers, experts and associates who take on this important role, despite having no formal education in the field of public relations. Posts on the website influence the parents' attitudes towards school, which is the subject of this paper that discusses which elements of the website are more important in creating the attitudes of parents towards school. The aim of the research is to determine how digital communication influences the creation of parents' attitudes towards school, whilst also examining teachers' attitudes towards the same elements for comparison purposes. The question "How do website posts affect parents' attitudes toward school?" raises the problem of the presence of sufficient awareness of the school staff about the impact of website posts on parents' attitudes toward school, given the lack of continuity and standardization of the task. The research questions of this paper focus on examining the impact of online posts on the creation of parents' attitudes toward school and therefore a parent survey questionnaire and a teacher survey questionnaire were created. Opinions about the content, visual characteristics of the site and the dynamics of publication were examined. The hypothesis that posts on a website have a significant impact on parents' attitudes toward school has not been confirmed, but research has shown that parents do have a positive attitude towards posts on a website, that they trust teachers and school principals, and that they place more importance on the visual component, while the teachers find the content that is posted on the website to be more important. The research has shown that teachers are taking a responsible and professional approach to posting on the school website in an effort to inform the public and build the school's reputation. This paper represents a significant scientific contribution given that the field of public relations in education is largely unexplored. The results open up the possibility of further research and extension of research to secondary education or the specific characteristics of web pages.

Keywords:

Computer supported collaboration, digital communication, school, parents, teachers.