The ability of such a complex and diverse society to function and to innovate depends fundamentally on its media-disseminated information and communication structures. At the same time new opportunities are also emerging in promoting innovation, since the store of knowledge can be disseminated faster and wider. The competence center SwissGIS has set the basic and comprehensive goal of analyzing social change in Switzerland induced by the media through systematic monitoring of real processes. In addition, a systematic inventory of national and international knowledge is performed in the sense of strategic analysis in order to optimize empirical research findings in regard to applicability and utility. In this way, specific projects will be carried out which refer to development and change in public communication within Switzerland.
Intermediary organizations become the primary focus of attention.
In addition, economic structure analyses will be carried out. Moreover, regulatory issues deal with maintaining and expanding the development of a proposed nation-wide Swiss media and communication system in an European perspective. Hence a link is provided to international social-science research. At the same time these studies provide an integrating central function for the overall project context aimed at conducting disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects focusing on Switzerland at the meso and micro levels. Based on a systematic diachronic comparison of public communication, the rather sociology -oriented focus of research is specifically directed toward changed forms of political representation by intermediary organizations as well as the creation of politics in intermediary organizations.