TY - JOUR
T1 - 'You're not just learning it you're living it!'
T2 - Constructing the 'good life' in Australian university online promotional videos
AU - Gottschall, Kristina
AU - Saltmarsh, Sue
N1 - Includes bibliographical references.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Online promotional videos on Australian university websites are a form of institutional branding and marketing that construct university experience in a variety of ways. Here we consider how these multimedia texts represent student lifestyles, identities and aspirations in terms of the ‘good life’. We consider how the ‘promise of happiness’ is deployed to appeal to perceived consumer desires within the local student market, as well as within the highly competitive global knowledge economy. These texts position university students as youthful, attractive, active and fun, and depict student life as being about leisure and pleasure. Such representations promote cultural and social entitlement to the ‘good life’ as if synonymous with choice, participation and success in higher education. Learning and scholarship are depicted as secondary activities. We also contend that claims to cosmopolitanism and consumerism are framed by racialised entitlements where Whiteness remains both a commodity and norm.
AB - Online promotional videos on Australian university websites are a form of institutional branding and marketing that construct university experience in a variety of ways. Here we consider how these multimedia texts represent student lifestyles, identities and aspirations in terms of the ‘good life’. We consider how the ‘promise of happiness’ is deployed to appeal to perceived consumer desires within the local student market, as well as within the highly competitive global knowledge economy. These texts position university students as youthful, attractive, active and fun, and depict student life as being about leisure and pleasure. Such representations promote cultural and social entitlement to the ‘good life’ as if synonymous with choice, participation and success in higher education. Learning and scholarship are depicted as secondary activities. We also contend that claims to cosmopolitanism and consumerism are framed by racialised entitlements where Whiteness remains both a commodity and norm.
KW - Branding strategies
KW - Marketing higher education
KW - Visual culture
KW - Student as consumer
KW - University choice
U2 - 10.1080/01596306.2016.1158155
DO - 10.1080/01596306.2016.1158155
M3 - Article
VL - 38
SP - 768
EP - 781
JO - Discourse
JF - Discourse
SN - 0159-6306
IS - 5
ER -