Change does not spare the communication and media landscape; rather, it is particularly fast here. "For universities like the University of St.Gallen, this has primarily meant two things with regard to communication and media work in the last few years: digitalisation and internationalisation," says Marius Hasenböhler-Backes, "and this within a markedly extended portfolio."
Digital change does not spare
the communication landscape
The official magazine of the University of St.Gallen – HSG Focus – for example, is a purely digital product. Every issue is now enjoyed by more than 10,000 users from Switzerland and abroad and generates more than 50,000 page views. "The most important source of information internally is now also digital: the intranet," says Hasenböhler-Backes. At the same time, University Communications produces substantially more editorial material for www.unisg.ch than just a few years ago, is active on Social Media channels ranging from Facebook to Instagram, produces video interviews with experts and researchers and operates an image database with more than a thousand photos − to name but a few digital spheres of action.
Social Media, in particular, are eminently suitable for disseminating information and other editorial material into the world beyond regional and national borders. Thus the HSG website annually registers approx. two million visitors (almost ten million page views) from far and wide, about 45,000 Facebook fans and just under 10,000 Twitter followers, as well as more than two million views of its videos on YouTube.
"It doesn't come as a surprise that our media work has also become more digital and more international," says Marius Hasenböhler-Backes. With pleasant success: On several occasions in spring 2017, Professor James W. Davis was a live interview guest on CNN, the well-known international news channel. Thanks to the Globelynx camera on the HSG campus, professors can be linked up via satellite and can conduct live interviews with news channels around the globe. All in all, the University of St.Gallen was represented in some 4,800 media contributions in the neighbouring German-speaking countries, as well as in the UK, Singapore and Brazil, from print to television − and the number continues to increase.