External Communication of Swiss Institutions of Higher Education

The public face of universities Universities and other Higher Education Institutions are devoting an increasing amount of resources to communication as they seek to highlight their achievements, attract students and demonstrate their wider relevance in today’s knowledge economy. We spoke to Professor Mike S. Schäfer and Dr Daniel Vogler about their research into the way HEIs communicate with the broader public.

Many universities and higher education institutions (HEIs) have professionalised their external communications over recent years, investing in resources and hiring personnel to manage their public and media relations.

This is about both communicating research findings and also improving the reputation of the institution, which in the longer term will help them attract more students and resources. “Universities typically perceive themselves to be in competition with other universities, other educational institutions,” says Mike Schäfer, Professor of Science Communication at the University of Zurich.

There is however a tension between these two separate aspects of public communication.

“There’s a clear incentive for universities to present themselves as positively as possible in public, but that can be a different goal than communicating the best available knowledge,” adds Doctor Daniel Vogler, deputy director of the Research Center for the Public Sphere & Society at the University of Zurich. “Another tension is that at the same time as universities are professionalising their external communications, scientific

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journalism - and journalism in general - is in crisis. There are fewer resources in journalism today, especially in specialist desks like science, limiting the ability of conventional media outlets to critically assess university media releases”

University communication As the Principal Investigators of an SNSFfunded research project, Schäfer, Vogler and their team, are exploring these tensions and how the way universities communicate with the broader public is changing. The specific focus in the project is on Swiss HEIs. “For a small country, Switzerland has a broad variety of HEIs. We have a number of globally high-ranking research universities and federally-funded technical universities (ETHs), with a national, international and regional scope. We also have a range of universities of applied sciences and arts, as well as colleges of education,” says Professor Schäfer. This broad variety makes Switzerland an ideal setting for the project, in which he and his colleagues are looking at all 42 of the country’s HEIs. “We do cross-sectional,

contemporary mappings of different aspects of university communications, while we also do ‘deep dives’ on specific universities,” Schäfer outlines. “In this mapping work we conduct surveys, looking at university communicators, leadership and councils. We’re trying to find out how these 42 different institutions view university communication; how important is it? What aims should it pursue?”

The results of this cross-cutting survey are then being used to put the 42 institutions into six different clusters, which are also based on certain organisational key indicators, such as the size of the institution, the type and the number of students. For example, they have identified the ‘well-resourced competitors’ among Swiss HEIs which communicate to the public extensively, strategically and professionally, such as the ETH Zurich or the University of Berne, or the ‘focused strategists’ that communicate strategically but pick specific topics to do so. In turn, they found five ‘minimalist’ HEIs which do not communicate to the public much, and when they do, they don’t do it in a very

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strategic way. The researchers then took typical examples from each of the clusters and now look at them qualitatively, which is the ‘deep dive’ aspect of the project’s work. “We talk to between 6-10 people at each institution. We collect documents, and we try to reconstruct the development of their external communications over the last 15-20 years,” explains Professor Schäfer. This period has been marked by the ongoing development of social media, which is an important consideration in the team’s research. “How does social media communication and news media coverage of these 42 institutions look today?” Schäfer says. “We are also looking at how they communicated in the past. For example, we are looking at news media coverage over the past 20 years for selected institutions typical of certain categories. From that we will then try to identify the challenges these institutions face, and potentially to develop recommendations on how to improve communications.”

A key first step is to investigate how these institutions communicate today and the strategies they use. All of the 42 institutions have a social media presence, using some, and almost always several, of the more commonly-used platforms. Daniel Vogler says these accounts are used to communicate

on different topics and at varying levels of intensity. “The research universities emphasise the quality of their research more, whereas universities of applied sciences tend to focus more extensively on student life and teaching,” he outlines. For example, ETH Zurich is one of the most prestigious institutions in Switzerland, ranked eighth in the 2022 QS World University rankings. The ETH Zurich uses social media to attract the best and brightest minds from across the

Investing in communication An institution needs to communicate to an international audience in order to maintain its status as a leading university in global rankings, which requires resources and investment in communication. This involves communicating about both major events, like a significant breakthrough in research or a member of the university receiving an academic prize, and also more everyday occurrences that can open up a window onto life at the institution

There’s a clear incentive for universities to present themselves as positively as possible, but that’s a different goal to communicating the available knowledge. world, including students and academic staff.

“They have both German and English language social media channels. They explicitly try to communicate to students and researchers abroad, and to try to attract them to Zurich.

Some of the smaller Swiss universities also do this, but to a lesser degree,” continues Doctor Vogler. “Larger universities often have a more international outlook, which often means that they invest more in communication.

They want to ensure they are visible internationally, because they are competing with international institutions.”

and the people and communities that work there. “Public relations offices are often highly professionalized nowadays. They communicate continuously, via different channels, to different target groups, about research findings, events, or interesting aspects of university life,” says Professor Schäfer. Communication is seen as an increasingly important function within universities, which Professor Schäfer says is having an impact on structures. “The heads of communication increasingly take part in leadership meetings, where their voices are often highly valued. However, the nature of the role has

changed,” he outlines. “We are investigating the extent to which communications departments focus on communicating scientific findings, vis-a-vis improving the image and reputation of an institution. Has there been an increased focus on the latter and an alignment with the organization’s strategic goals over recent years?”

A lot of progress has been made on the empirical part of this research. Surveys have been conducted on the 42 universities, while the team is working on the ‘deep dive’ aspect of the project’s overall agenda. “We are in the process of doing qualitative, indepth interviews, and document analysis on selected universities, looking to reconstruct the development of their communications over time. We’ve done some social media and news media analysis, and we are in the process of doing the longitudinal analysis, looking at the long-term changes over time,” Schäfer says.

This research could prove highly relevant to communications specialists in universities, helping guide public relations officers on how they can communicate effectively to specific audiences, which is central to their image and public standing. The majority of Swiss universities and HEIs are publicly funded, so Professor Schäfer says they need to highlight their achievements and importance to wider society in order to retain public and political support. “What politicians think about these

institutions is important. And we know from previous studies that many politicians’ and stakeholders’ perceptions of universities are based on news media coverage,” he continues.

A good standing in both the news media and social media is correspondingly important for universities, with Professor Schäfer looking at how different institutions approach public communications and the emphasis they place on it. While much of this work is still ongoing, the research team has already published several research papers, which provide a picture of how institutions of different sizes and specialisms are represented in the media. “We have several different types of universities in Switzerland, and they communicate in different ways,” he says. Analysis has revealed that one particular cluster of institutions – called the Praised Researchers by the project team – received a large amount of positive coverage, in part due to their sophisticated and extensive public relations efforts, underlining the wider importance of effective communication.

“Global University rankings are based on different criteria, including measures of the reputation of universities as assessed by surveys of stakeholders. The views of these stakeholders are influenced by public presentations and news media coverage,” continues Professor Schäfer.

External Communication of Swiss Institutions of Higher Education Project Objectives

C3H is the first research project in Switzerland devoted to tracking and comparing nation-wide developments in the external communication of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Its aim is two-fold. The project will a) investigate the content, strategies and audiences of HEIs’ communication in Switzerland and the organizational structure in which it is embedded and b) explore the external perception of HEIs through Swiss news and social media during the past 20 years.

Project Funding

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, 2019-2022

Project Partners

Research Center for the Public Sphere & Society, University of Zurich

Contact Details

Prof. Dr. Mike S. Schäfer Professor of Science Communication Dept. of Communication & Media Research @ University of Zurich T: +41 (0)44 635 20 80 E: m.schaefer@ikmz.uzh.ch Tw: @mss7676 W: https://c3h.ch/en/ W: www.ikmz.uzh.ch/en/research/divisions/ science-crisis-and-risk-communication.html Daniel Vogler

Prof. Mike S. Schäfer

Mike S. Schäfer is Professor of Science Communication at the Department of Communication and Media Research and Director of the Center for Higher Education & Science Studies (CHESS) at the University of Zurich. He is Co-Founder of the „Science Barometer Switzerland“ and has published widely on science communication and climate change communication.

Daniel Vogler is the Deputy Director of the Research Center for the Public Sphere and Society (fög) at the University of Zurich.

His research focuses on public relations, journalism, and online communication.

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