sustainability Article Online Place Branding: Is Geography ‘Destiny’ in a ‘Space of Flows’ World? Victor-Alexandru Briciu * ,Cătălina-Ionela Rezeanu and Arabela Briciu Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Bras, ov, 500036 Bras, ov, Romania;
[email protected] (C.-I.R.);
[email protected] (A.B.) * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +40-724-217-400 Received: 17 April 2020; Accepted: 13 May 2020; Published: 15 May 2020 Abstract: Places have been promoting their attractions throughout history for almost a century now and place marketing started capturing the attention of economic researchers in the early 1990s. Although the globalized space has become a major interdisciplinary field of study in the past few decades, we still do not have a definite solution for measuring or predicting the changes it brings. The aim of this study is to propose an instrument to help scholars quantify the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 components of the online presence of place brands and their spatial dynamics in a broader global context. By taking the ‘space of flows’ approach to frame globalization, we questioned whether geography is still destiny in the context of online place branding communication. To answer the question, we developed a category grid and applied it in the content analysis of 82 official country websites. We found that geographical position is still important in conditioning the adoption of Web 1.0, and does not make a significant difference in the adoption of Web 2.0. However, the strongest predictors of the adoption of Web 1.0 are not the ones related to geography, but to socio-economic inequality.