Jérôme Chariatte receives the "Master Thesis Award for Excellence - Practical Impact" at this year's conference of the European Public Relations and Education Research Association (EUPRERA) in Zagreb, Croatia (26-28.09.2019). The work entitled "The impact of International News and Stereotypes on the Country Image", was supervised by Prof. Dr. Diana Ingenhoff.

The study of country images has become a vital research domain within in public diplomacy and international strategic communication. In his thesis, Jérôme Chariatte uses agenda setting theory and news value theory to hypothesize how international news and news factors, such as proximity, come to determine people’s country image. Further, the candidate incorporates a cognitive level in his analysis by including recent discussions on national stereotypes, as well as a newly developed five dimensional model of the country image.

For public diplomacy and strategic communication practice, the insights from Chariatte’s thesis offer a complex picture of the conjoined and weighted influence of national stereotypes and the international media on the country image, and assess how they differ along the lines of geographic proximity. The results allow practitioners to better understand the complex process of the formation of country images and can serve as an evidence based source for strategic communication measures accordingly. Overall, the jury applauds Jérôme Chariatte for outstanding academic work that contributes to a topical discussion in the field and offers insights based on a sophisticated research design.