The Global Pursuit of Academic Prestige: Digital Branding and Multilingual Communication in Higher Education

Hafssa Bourfed is a PhD candidate at the SLLACH Research Laboratory, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Dhar El Mahraz (FLDM), Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (USMBA), Fez, Morocco, under the supervision of Prof. Rahma Barbara. Her doctoral research focuses on the multilingual digital communication strategies of Moroccan telecom operators, with particular attention to code-switching, multimodal semiotics, and advertising discourse. Her broader research interests include sociolinguistics, digital communication, higher education branding, and the intersection of artificial intelligence and academic writing. She has authored and co-authored work on generative AI in Moroccan higher education and on multilingual advertising in the North African context. ORCID: 0009-0003-8776-9655.

Hamza Boujida holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Management and a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Management. He is a Professor at HECF Business School, Morocco. His doctoral research focuses on the valorization of cultural heritage in the emergence of entrepreneurial cities, with particular attention to the city of Fez. His broader interests bridge management sciences, territorial development, and higher education, and he has co-authored research on generative artificial intelligence and academic writing in Moroccan higher education.

Rahma Barbara is a Professor of Higher Education (PES) in Language Sciences at the Department of French Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Dhar El Mahraz (FLDM), Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (USMBA), Fez, Morocco. She is the Director of the SLLACH Research Laboratory (Sciences du Langage, Littératures, Arts, Communication et Histoire) and co-founder of the journal Langue, Culture et Société (LACUS). She formerly served as Vice-President of the international Poclande Network (2021–2024). Her research areas include corpus linguistics, Arabic and French linguistics, paremiology, dialectology, and the languages of Morocco, within contrastive, descriptive, and sociolinguistic approaches.