We are proud to celebrate two special recognitions awarded at the 2025 Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (SACM) Annual Conference last week in Chur.

Our team members Sarah Daoust-Braun and Noemi Festic received the Saxer Award for Best Presentation for their work on how motives for digital communication mitigate the chilling effects of dataveillance. This research is part of the Media Change & Innovation Division’s project The Chilling Effects of Dataveillance: Conceptual Advances and Empirical Evidence for Switzerland, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Our former team member Kiran Kappeler, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Tracking and Society at the University of Copenhagen, was also honored with the Dissertation Award for her outstanding cumulative dissertation entitled “Negotiating Digital Technology Use in the Highly Digitized Swiss Society – A Mixed-Method Analysis of the Digital Practices of Individuals.”

Kiran’s doctoral work is based on her collaboration in three Media Change & Innovation Division’s projects: The Chilling Effects of Dataveillance: Conceptual Advances and Empirical Evidence for Switzerland and The Significance of Algorithmic Selection for Everyday Life: The Case of Switzerland, both funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as the World Internet Project - Switzerland.

We warmly congratulate them for their well-deserved achievements!