The IAM MediaLab is a participatory platform that encourages people to actively engage in the challenges brought on by digital transformation. For example, it helps participants develop key competences and skills in dealing with new presentation formats in journalism and organisational communication.

The IAM MediaLab is also an incubator for ideas and innovation, a place with experimental lab sessions for staff, graduates, students and partners alike. The overarching question across all our activities remains the same: What is digital transformation doing to us and how can we deal with it?

The workshops in the IAM MediaLab provide greater insight into our ongoing research and field projects, offering participants the opportunity to discuss and exchange experiences in an interactive manner.

The IAM MediaLab invites academics and practitioners to give talks that stimulate knowledge building and knowledge transfer on topics relating to digital transformation. There are opportunities for discussions and networking following each talk.

The IAM MediaLab offers space for people to work on their own topics, be it in connection with a project from their studies, professional field or research. We bring together experts from different disciplines, try out new formats, experiment with various technologies and work together on the research questions and challenges that we all are facing right now.

The project "How to Reach Swiss Digital Natives with News" looks at what youth understand by the term 'news', how they use it and what they expect news will offer in the future. This qualitative, ethnographic study, led by Aleksandra Gnach, Wibke Weber and Guido Keel, takes into consideration the special characteristics of the multilingual Swiss media landscape and social media communication. Funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Communications, the project will run until September 2020.

This interdisciplinary project explores and further develops the use of virtual reality (VR) as an innovative way to bring people closer to the concepts of sustainability, energy and smart mobility. By playing a VR game, residents in the city of Winterthur can immerse themselves in a virtual city and experience smart mobility. At the core of the VR game is immersive storytelling, which makes new mobility concepts in a smart city accessible and comprehensible. The aim of this research project is to find out which elements of VR storytelling offer the greatest potential to enable citizens to participate in decisions in the field of urban development and mobility. This project is a collaboration with the ZHAW School of Engineering.

The IAM MediaLab is a member of the ZHAW Data Science Laboratory.