The country image from the interdisciplinary perspective

Abstract

The article provides an overview of current trends in country image research, placing the research interests of various disciplines in a common context. Highlighting this issue illustrates how different academic perspectives can be applied to answer a wide range of research questions, contributing to the interdisciplinary study of country image, encompassing multiple and diverse aspects and facilitating understanding of the complexity of the subject at hand. Consequently, the article argues the usefulness of combining research efforts by resorting to various scientific paradigms, including those located in the cradle of symbolic politics or the theory of symbolic interactionism or generated by the paradigm of the social construction of reality or structural functionalism, as well as engaging in the investigation of the image of the country of such perspectives as the theory of social representations or the theories of media communication, as the theory of agenda setting. Thus, the investigative arsenal applied to the image of the country obtains the adequate conceptual framework, the necessary and favorable weight in the elaboration of the integrated, complex vision of the phenomenon.