Since January 1th, 2011, Swiss cantons are obliged to restore rivers. This aim, to minimize the human, economic and ecological losses while maximizing the benefits of ordinary floods, is on the one hand typically supported by the general public. On the other hand, concrete river restoration and revitalization projects are often confronted with large resistors in the local public. This complexity of the tasks of modern disaster management and flood risk reduction is also treated in "the news". Even though restoration/ revitalization has become a subject for discussion in Swiss local press, in the field of research on river restoration and revitalization, the role of the media communication and information flow remains seldom mentioned yet. In addition, there is a lack of research strategy to study framing processes in river management over time.
The aim of this media-monitoring is to reconstruct the thematization of restoration and revitalization in the media coverage of different newspaper over the period of 2000–2013. The media monitoring is being realized with social- and media-scientific approaches of a quantitative content analysis of selected local press. Using a detailed study of local media coverage of river restoration and revitalization from 2000–2013 in two cantons of Switzerland (Bern & Valais), this research illustrates the salient features and dynamic of the information and communication flow, the framing of the discourses, involved actors and how these relate to changes in risk perception and prevention behavior in the public sphere.