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IPMZ
Institute of Mass Communication
and Media Research, University of Zurich
Andreasstrasse 15
CH-8050 Zürich
Telefon: +41 44 634 46 61
Fax: +41 44 634 49 34
E-Mail: sekretariat@ipmz.uzh.ch


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Media Economics & Management

The division's research and teaching work focuses on five research areas:

Media marketing, media brands and reputation

Our research on media marketing, media brands and reputation analyses how media marketing tackles the challenges of marketing media products (e.g. the necessity of multi-channel distribution or the lacking protection of property rights). We also examine the effects of media marketing on the performance of the media. Among the various strategy options, the brand strategy seems to be especially suitable and promising. Hence our research focuses on how the implementation of a media-brand-strategy fits with journalistic quality standards, whether media brands can serve as heuristics for the decision making of recipients, and how the reputation of a media brand as an institutional arrangement could ease the different problems of market failure.

Development of Advertising

In the field Development of Advertising, our research addresses network structures within the production of advertising, the role and cooperation of actors as well as risks that unfold for the media and possible solutions. In addition, from a media studies perspective our research addresses the possible developments of commercial communication, including advertising formats and advertising messages. Even though trends are often claimed, empirical evidence for these developments is largely unavailable and internationally comparable data remains even scarcer. Therefore comparative research is a main focus.

Management of media production and innovation

The research on the management of media production focuses on two distinct production environments, the first being journalistic production and the second being the production of entertainment. For each context we investigate which players engage with which structural ties using different resources. Focussing on journalistic production we address issues such as the determinants of editorial resource allocation or the respective influences of an orientation towards quality, audience popularity or profit on editorial guidelines, applied predominantly to print media. For the second focus on the production of entertainment we concentrate on audio-visual media. We are investigating the dynamics of the production of entertainment programs and channels together with the underlying industry structures and organisational networks of relevant players and their respective objectives. In this way we address questions of how crucial input resources can be secured and how creativity can be managed.

Communication strategies and media reactions

The research in this field is connected to economic reporting. Organizations try to use public relations and other instruments to influence the media agenda to their interest. At the same time, the media is actively looking for interesting topics to report on business-related issues. Often organisations change the original interpretation framework or a piece in accordance with media-logics and the ways in which news reporting is processed.

Media markets and media strategies

Using a modified structure conduct performance approach we can see that the structure of the media market and the conduct of media organizations mutually influence each other. They enable and limit each other, presenting two sides of the same coin. It becomes evident that there is a convergence of different media markets and related cross-media strategies by media organizations. On the one hand, the classic definition of media genres becomes obsolete because they are neglected in the strategies of media organizations (and by the media users).On the other hand, production and distribution is organized across media, since the distinctions between different types of media vanish. This is the starting point of our research in this field. It includes theoretical and empirical examinations of issues such as market definition or market failure and their potential solutions, and studies on (changing) media strategies in face of dynamic media market development.