Michael Amsler

Michael Amsler is a Researcher at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research, part of the Faculty of Arts. He holds dual roles as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Media Research and a Research Assistant in the Department of Computational Linguistics (Innosuisse Project ReAdvisor). His research focuses on automated media content analysis, political communication, and computational linguistics applications in social media environments. Amsler earned his MA in Mass Communication and Media Research (2012) and completed his PhD in the NCCR Democracy project (2020).

• Education: MA 2012 (UZH), PhD 2020 (UZH)
• Affiliations: Institute of Mass Communication, Department of Computational Linguistics, ARGUS der Presse AG (2013-2020)

His work bridges computational methods with political communication studies, analyzing media framing of governance, populist strategies, and emotionalized discourse. Key projects include SIFT (media coverage toolkit) and ReAdvisor (innosuisse NLP project). His publications span sentiment analysis frameworks, verb-based polarity classification, and social media’s role in amplifying political anger.

Notable contributions include developing Sentiframes (verb-centric German sentiment resources) and exploring how alternative media drive polarized reactions. His research emphasizes automated tools for analyzing governance legitimacy and public accountability through language technologies.