Prof. Dr. Moritz Büchi

Work at ZHAW

Position

Professor of Digital Media

Focus

• People: digital media practices (everyday media use, repertoires, information seeking, privacy behavior, non-use), enablers and barriers (e.g., skills, motivations, social context), subjective well-being
• Organizations: digital offers and strategy, platformization and algorithmization, digital public media, platform evolution, data and surveillance
• Society: digitalization and democracy, media infrastructure and governance, digital innovation diffusion, social norms and values, inequality
• Methods: R/tidyverse, survey methodology, measurement, multivariate modeling and SEM, theory construction and causal inference, mixed methods, longitudinal designs, diary methods, visualization

Teaching

• Bachelor Communication and Media Studies
• Master Language and Communication, Specialization Strategic Communication Management
• CAS Digital Transformation and Communication
• Supervision of Bachelor's and Master's Theses

Experience

• Professor of Digital Media
  ZHAW Applied Linguistics, Institute of Applied Media Studies
  2026 - today
• Lecturer and Head of the Professorship Digital Media
  ZHAW Applied Linguistics, Institute of Applied Media Studies
  2025 - 2025
• Senior Media Analyst, Analysis and Data Intelligence
  SRG SSR (Swiss Broadcasting Corporation) General Directorate, Development and Offering
  2022 - 2024
• Senior Research and Teaching Associate, Media Change and Innovation
  University of Zurich, Department of Communication and Media Research
  2017 - 2022
• Coordinator World Internet Project – Switzerland
  University of Zurich
  2017 - 2022
• Research Consultant, Children and Digital Technology
  UNICEF Global Office of Research and Foresight
  2020 - 2021
• Visiting Fellow, Media and Communications
  LSE London School of Economics and Political Science
  2020 - 2020
• Fellow, Digital Well-Being
  UZH Digital Society Initiative
  2019 - 2020
• Research and Teaching Associate, Media Change and Innovation
  University of Zurich, Department of Communication and Media Research
  2014 - 2016

Education and Continuing education

Education

• PhD / Communication
  University of Zurich
  2014 - 2017
• MA in Social Sciences / Media and Communication, Sociology
  University of Zurich
  2011 - 2014
• BA in Social Sciences / Media and Communication, Management and Economics
  University of Zurich
  2007 - 2011

Continuing Education

• Courses in Teaching Methods and AI
  PH Zurich
  2025
• Public Value for Public Service Media
  European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Academy
  2024
• Computational Social Science (Summer School)
  Princeton University
  2017
• Digital Methods (Summer School)
  University of Amsterdam
  2014

Network

Membership of networks

• ZHAW Digital Futures Lab
• SACM Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research
• Bildungskommission SRG Zürich Schaffhausen
• Working Group Digital Migration of the Radio Sector
• Editorial Board Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media
• UZH Digital Society Initiative

ORCID digital identifier

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9202-889X

Awards

Included in "World’s Top 2%" scientists list
Stanford University / Elsevier Scopus
09 / 2025

Social media

• LinkedIn
• Open Science Framework

Media presence

• [Deutschlandfunk] Offliner: Ein Leben ohne Internet in Deutschland
• [Evulpo] Video on media literacy
• [Watson] Smartphone-Konsum: «Diskussion um Bildschirmzeit lenkt von den wichtigen Fragen ab»
• [SonntagsBlick] Kennzeichnungspflicht gefordert: Schweizer fühlen sich KI ausgeliefert

Projects

• Digital PATHS: Digital Practices and Adolescent Thriving in Switzerland / Project leader / ongoing
• Science Fiction Prototyping: Human-AI Futures / Co-project leader / ongoing
• Evolving Digital Information Practices: How Emerging Adults Use AI Tools / Project leader / ongoing
• Technologization and Digitalization in Swiss Residential and Nursing Homes / Team member / ongoing
• Digitalization of Radio Use in Switzerland / Project leader / completed

Publications

Articles in scientific journal, peer-reviewed

• Festic, N. et al. (2026) 'Dataveillance inhibits legitimate communication : causal evidence for chilling effects', Journal of Communication. doi: 10.1093/joc/jqag004.
• Gennari, F. et al. (2025) 'The role of psychosocial factors in youth sexting : a multi-country analysis of risk perception', Journal of Adolescent Health, 76(5), pp. 847–855. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2025.01.008.

Written conference contributions, peer-reviewed

• Büchi, M. and Reisdorf, B. C. (2025) 'The durable divide : who remains at the margins of the digital society?', in Understanding and addressing digital inequalities, Florence, Italy, 20-21 November 2025.
• Festic, N. et al. (2025) 'Causal evidence for the chilling effects of dataveillance : a longitudinal field experiment and focus-group study', in SACM/SGKM Annual Conference, Chur, Switzerland, 21-23 May 2025.

Other publications

• Büchi, M. (2025) Digital media and social inequality : a primer in the context of Swiss digital society. Winterthur: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-2831.
• Büchi, M. (2025) 'Medien', in Digitale Kluft : Überblick, Analysen und Empfehlungen von Fachpersonen und Betroffenen. Christoph Merian Stiftung, pp. 63–70. Available at: https://irf.fhnw.ch/server/api/core/bitstreams/c764fe4b-c592-4a3e-97ca-c01b0c7b8c7b/content.

Oral conference contributions and abstracts

Büchi, M., Wyss, V. and Fehlmann, F. (2026) 'Information practices in the age of AI : a vignette-based study of emerging adults in Switzerland', in Jahrestagung der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft (SGKM-SACM), Winterthur, Switzerland, 22-24 April 2026.

Publications before appointment at the ZHAW

• List of publications on Google Scholar
• Selected Publications:
• Digital Well-Being Theory and Research
• Conflicting Norms—How Norms of Disconnection and Availability Correlate With Digital Media Use Across Generations
• Everyday disconnection experiences: Exploring people’s understanding of digital well-being and management of digital media use
• Children’s exposure to hate messages and violent images online
• Digital Media Use, Impact on Well-Being
• Making sense of algorithmic profiling: user perceptions on Facebook
• Knowledge and Well-Being in the Digital Society: Towards a Research Agenda
• Estimates of Internet Access for Children in Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania
• A Need for Considering Digital Inequality When Studying Social Media Use and Well-Being
• The Chilling Effects of Digital Dataveillance: A Theoretical Model and an Empirical Research Agenda
• Digitalisierungsschub durch die Covid-19-Pandemie in der Schweiz: Spezialbericht aus dem World Internet Project–Switzerland 2021
• Smartphone Use and Academic Performance: A Pervasiveness Approach Beyond Addiction
• From use to overuse: Digital inequality in the age of communication abundance
• Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration
• The chilling effects of algorithmic profiling: Mapping the issues
• Digital overuse and subjective well-being in a digitized society
• Older Adults’ Online Information Seeking and Subjective Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Internet Skills
• How social well-being is affected by digital inequalities
• Digital footprints: an emerging dimension of digital inequality
• A blind spot in public broadcasters’ discovery of the public: How the public values public service
• Caring is not enough: the importance of Internet skills for online privacy protection
• Modeling the second-level digital divide: A five-country study of social differences in Internet use
• Measurement invariance in comparative Internet use research

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