“…3 The performance of societal functions of media brands was investigated within a first study combining interviews with 1 Besides the aforementioned factors there are also influence factors, e.g. media managers of news media brands and audience survey (Krebs et al 2012a(Krebs et al , 2012b. 2 The Swiss National Science Foundation generously funded the project 'Challenges to democracy in the 21st century' as one of its National Centers of Competence in Research (NCCR).…”