From mobility to visibility: international mobility, digital mediation, and university reputation in the new media environment

Altay I.

Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler ve Eğitim Dergisi, cilt.8, sa.15, ss.385-408, 2026 (Hakemli Dergi)

Özet

Abstract International mobility is widely assumed to strengthen university reputation, yet the channel through which it now reaches the audiences that form reputational judgments has been undertheorized. Its central argument is that mobility should not be assumed to raise reputation on its own. It does so only once it becomes a digitally mediated signal, surfaced by platform and search dynamics, and read as credible by stakeholders. Drawing on a structured, documentbased conceptual review that brings the literature on internationalization together with recent work on digital communication and new media, the study reframes mobility not as an educational experience but as a source of reputational signals. It proposes a recursive model in which mobility generates a signal that passes through digital mediation, visibility, and retrieval, and stakeholder interpretation before any reputational effect is realized, with the resulting reputation feeding back into subsequent mobility. Two conditions govern the process: the quality of the signal, and the stakeholder-relative nature of its interpretation.

Keywords: Higher Education, University Reputation, International Mobility, Digital Mediation, Online Visibility, Signaling Theory, Stakeholder Interpretation