Research Domains at the IPMZ

Mass Communication and media research at the IPMZ is performed in the tradition of empirical social science with interdisciplinary references. Societal communication is in the center, produced and diffused by the press, radio, television, the internet, mobile communication etc. – with a special emphasis on public communication but not exclusively. Our research deals with the conditions, forms, and effects of mediated communication. Thereby, our modern society is understood and explained as a media and information society, shaped by mediated communication. Our theoretically based and empirically focused research activities are strongly linked to the social, political and economical structures of societal and especially public communication, and the involved actors and their strategies, the performance of media as well as the effects of mass communication on individual media users and the society as a whole. Doing so, we emphasize an internationally oriented comparative perspective with a special focus on Switzerland.