For an institution to succeed, it needs to adapt to its environment. Today changes occur rapidly at all levels, including communication. In the case of universities, one might think that they are exempt from this concern as they have the most expert professionals in the field (understanding these institutions as a source of knowledge). However, even if a professional knows all the possible forms of communication, they must continuously search for new ways of interacting with their stakeholders while studying them and adapting to them quickly. Nowadays, new forms of communication are constantly emerging among the stakeholders of the same organization, so the sooner they are involved and updated the better it would be.

With the advancement of technologies and the increase in the demands of stakeholders, universities have had to adapt and change their communication models. From practically their origins and given that in many cases they were entities dependent on the Public Administration, their form of communication responded to a traditional opacity and the emission of scarce and unidirectional messages. As the Administrations came to understand the importance of being in contact with their environment, they adopted a more interactive type of communication. Thus, gradually, communication in administrative entities came to be understood as a public service focused on allowing citizens to know their duties, obligations, and opportunities. In addition, transparency came to play a fundamental role due to the need to be accountable to society.  But what was the main reason for institutions to join this new communication model? In addition to trying to increase citizen participation and involvement, the aim was to project a public image based on the trust of their external and internal audiences that would enable them to gain support for their actions.

The fact that in many cases universities were linked to a strong concept of “tradition” in certain cultures, slowed down the explicit development of communicative and informative processes in these institutions. However, although at first, the authorities were reluctant to make profound changes, (precisely because the traditional forms had worked up to that time), the criteria and “know-how” of the new communicative model gradually gained weight. Thus, one of the first steps taken by the universities was the creation of a press office as a defense against possible actions by the media and as a projection of the image of the institution’s leader. Later, internal communication actions were also adopted and relations with the socioeconomic environment were increased through marketing and advertising actions to face an increasingly competitive environment. Finally, university communication departments achieved widespread recognition of the strategic role played by communication in these institutions. Thus, all the communication actions and structures that had been scattered to date were logically brought together to conceive communication as a strategic element rather than a simple instrument.