Quality education and religious disciplines are the core missions of many faith-based universities (FBUs) in Nigeria. In the context of proliferation of private universities in Nigeria, how do FBUs persuade or convince their potential students to choose their institutions on their websites and how do they project themselves as institutions with a competitive edge in terms of delivering quality education while enforcing religious disciplines? In line with these questions, this study engages an appraisal network to analyse the data drawn from the websites of 20 FBUs in Nigeria. Findings show that the “About Us” texts largely deploy appraisal resources to project their institutions as balanced in terms of giving the students opportunity to acquire the best education in the best religious environment. The study also reveals that FBUs believe that the existing societal challenges can only be solved when young people are exposed to spiritual disciplines while studying.
Top1. Introduction
In tertiary institutions, websites are deployed to act as public relation officers, promotional channels and first point of contact to web visitors. Higher institutions are different organisations of similar brands that appeal to the same set of target audience; they compete through various advertisements to get the highest attention from their target audience. Akinbode (2012) describes advertising as any form of public announcement that is aimed at notifying or informing people about the availability, quality or cost of specific commodities or services. The “About Us” section of universities’ websites is a form of advertisement as they contain information that project each institution as distinct from another. Advertising used to be about making samples available to announce that a product is available; but according to El-Dali (2019), it has now evolved into a social discourse because of its unparalleled rhetorical force.
Today, the growth of commercial activities on the Web has seen hundreds of new companies creating web pages daily. Websites represent an important marketing tools for business as it helps them to establish a global presence, establish and maintain a competitive edge, shorten and eradicate supply chains and save cost (Ganguly et.al, 2010). The evolution of the internet as a medium for marketing has led to the rapid growth of e-commerce in the past ten years.
The initial goal of website development of schools was to just have a presence on the web; however, most educational institutions now have websites where they include distinct and remarkable content with information about the school (Astani & El hindi, 2008). Astani and Elhindi (2008) explain that university websites have two types of audience: the primary audience (general staff and students- and the secondary audience (public and other institutions). Information on websites of universities include promotional information of the university; necessary information for current students; and necessary information for visitors (Birol & Hassan, 2014).
It is a trend for companies and organizations to adopt a profile that gives a summary of their outfits. On university websites, there is always a section that provides a brief introduction to the institution, this part of the website is highly important as it helps to give information to educate and get the attention of prospective students. It is often the first text that prospective students consult when they want to get an institution for further studies. Therefore, the “about us” texts of websites are promotional in nature; in other words, they are written to position the institution as a force to be reckoned with (Alhojailan, 2020). The ‘About Us’ text is an introductory section aimed at introducing and describing companies, institutions, individuals, or groups (Casan-Pitarch, 2015). It often provides the organisation’s mission statement, philosophy, achievements, etc. (Alhojailan, 2020). Scholars have recognised the university websites as a great resource in corpus studies (Caiazzo, 2009; Yang, 2009).
Faith-based higher education institutions are established with missions strongly connected with engaging service and the community; they are established to address social issues, serve the global and local community, and involve all stakeholders in this purpose (Daniels and Gustafson, 2011). Faith-based Universities (FBUs) aim at sharing and spreading the distinct theological and cultural ideologies of their owners or proprietors. Many Christian FBUs seek to integrate faith and learning curricular. In other words, they seek to encourage making religious values a part of learning and infusing these values into curriculum development. There are 38 universities in Nigeria owned by different Christian missions and organisations in Nigeria (New Man, 2023).
The chapter is aimed at analysing appraisal resources in the “About Us” texts of FBUs websites. It seeks to answer the following questions: (i) what appraisal resources writers employ to promote their universities’ images; and (ii) how do these resources project faith-based universities as balanced institutions where students can be both academically and morally sound.