الملخص الإنجليزي
The study aims to investigate the communicative roles of websites in the major universities of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. The study uses a purposive sample of websites that include Sultan Qaboos University, King Saud University, University of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates University, Qatar University and Kuwait University. The study analyzes the websites from three perspectives: the design and layout of the websites, the content of the websites, the strategies of communication used.
This study is a descriptive analysis, it aims to identify and analyze the mechanisms applied by the universities in the GCC States and their websites as a communicative method for their local and international clients, and compare the websites with each other in this area. The study focuses on a purposive sample covering six universities in the GCC countries, and was conducted from 1/10/2013 until 15/11/2013, The study concludes that the sample websites are considerably different in some aspects, similar in some elements and totally resemble each other in some parts. In terms of the design's features, the websites differ in achieving the elements in each category to varying degrees and resemble each other in some elements. In general, the sample websites can be easily reached through different search engines. They show high efficiency in their loading speed and readability. They differ in the simplicity, some are relatively simple such as the websites of Sultan Qaboos University, UAE University, Qatar University and Kuwait University and some are complicated such as the websites of Bahrain University and King Saud University. There are also websites that can be easily browsed because of the systematicity of their elements such as Sultan Qaboos University and Bahrain University. This systematicity is relatively not found in the websites of UAE University, Qatar University, Kuwait University and King Saud University The wehsites of UAE University and Bahrain University are considerably consistent in many of their elements. Other websites differ in this aspect. The King Saud University website is more excellent in variation and attraction than the other sample websites In terms of the content of the websites, some content clements stand out in the same website, while focusing less on other elements. Therefore, the websites differ in their way of presenting the various contents. The results show that the contents of learning and teaching are the most obvious ones in all of the websites. The contents of research are few in the websites and their presence in their pages except King Saud University website. The contents of community service are not available in all of the sample websites. The analysis also shows that King Saud University website takes the lead of presenting different types of content such as general information, legal information, policies and strategies. In addition to that, it excels in using different and various types of communication and in the availability of content. It also provides services which are not available in other websites, while the other five websites differ in providing the abovementioned contents and information.
At last, the study shows that all websites depend on the information strategy as the most prominent strategy of communication, while other strategies are not applied, such as persuasion strategy, consensus-building strategy and dialogue strategy. Overall, it can be said that the website of King Saud University is the most distinguished sites among the other websites in various elements of the analysis.
