The effect of international political communication activities on the images and perceptions of countries: A research on students with Turkiye scholarships in İstanbul university

As soon as politics and communication were regarded as scientific disciplines, political communication was conceptualized. Political communication has gained international dimension with public diplomacy, which underlines the importance of countries' communication with foreign publics, especially after democratic practices became widespread, as a consequence of the destruction of world wars and the effect of globalization. Consequently, international political communication emerged as a concept. Starting from 2000s, international political communication has been mentioned along with international public relations, country image, and nation branding concepts, with the help of advanced internet technologies. Thus, fields such as education, investment, and tourism have gained importance. In literature review part of the thesis, the relation between soft power and public diplomacy concepts were defined, and the connection between international political communication and international public relations were presented through the description of politics and political communication concepts. In addition, the concept of nation branding was discussed with branding concept and the relation between country image management was provided. Furthermore, the literature of country image and country personality was presented. The main problem, which this thesis tackled to solve, was to display the relation between education and country image. In this thesis, Alexander Buhmann's 4 Dimensional Country Image Scale was adapted to Turkish. The survey with two scales as, 4 Dimensional Country Image Scale and Alain d'Astous ve Lilia Boujbel's Country Personality Scale, which was adapted to Turkish by Murat Aktan, was applied to 244 students in Istanbul University with Turkiye Scholarships. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were utilized to test the results via SPSS program. As a result, the relation between education and country image is displayed and international education's being an important international political communication application is presented.