This is a preprint of chapter published in the volume Bridging disciplinary perspectives on the formation and effects of country image, reputation, brand, and identity. Please cite as: Buhmann, A.; Ingenhoff, D.; White, C.; Kiousis, S. (2018). Charting the landscape in research on country image, reputation, brand, and identity: A trans-disciplinary overview. In D. Ingenhoff, C. White, A. Buhmann, S. Kiousis (eds.): Bridging disciplinary perspectives on the formation and effects of country image, reputation, brand, and identity. New York: Routledge. _______________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Charting the landscape in research on country image, reputation, brand, and identity: A trans-disciplinary overview Alexander Buhmann Department of Communication and Culture BI Norwegian Business School Oslo, Norway Diana Ingenhoff Department of Communication and Media Research University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland Candace White School of Advertising & Public Relations University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee, USA Spiro Kiousis Department of Public Relations University of Florida Gainesville, Florida, USA Abstract The growing prominence of country images in public discourse has given rise to a burgeoning of attention in academic scholarship. Country image and related constructs such as country reputation, brand, and identity have been an object of debate in fields such as marketing, psychology, sociology, communication studies, and political science. However, in each of these discourses, scholars analyze the related constructs unaware of the work in other disciplines, and therefore do not build upon it. This chapter provides an overview of the current scholarship, structures recent work across disciplines and illustrates the main lines of research as presented in this handbook. Introduction In times of globalization, countries are increasingly observed by global media and publics. Countries are rated and compared according to their economic development, political stability, effectiveness, and morality of their national and international politics and the attractiveness of their scenery and culture (Buhmann & Ingenhoff, 2015). The fact that perceptions of countries are both the cause and outcome of social and psychological processes that relate to a multitude of economic, cultural and political effects has led to a plethora of studies in diverse academic disciplines such as psychology (e.g., Ashmore, Deaux, & McLaughlin-Volpe, 2004; David & Bar-Tal, 2009; Huddy, 2001), business studies and marketing (e.g., Lu, Heslop, Thomas, & Kwan, 2016; Roth & Diamantopoulos,