Short Biography of Dr. Peter Diem

My native city is Vienna, the capital of Austria. Born on April 7th, 1937, I grew up in Vienna.
My studies comprised English Interpreting and Law (University of Vienna ‘58/'60) and Political Science (Southern Illinois University, M.S. '61).

After 12 years as campaign manager and public opinion expert with the Austrian People's Party (OEVP - Christian Democrats) and two years of market research for the Fritz Molden Publishing House, I started to build up audience research for ORF, the Austrian Radio and Television Corporation, in 1979.

With the help of my department, responsible for audience research in public service radio and TV, the ORF introduced a modern TV people meter system (TAM) in 1990. I was chairman of GEAR (the Group of European Audience Researchers) for three consecutive years.

Most of the work of my former department is documented on the website of the ORF at http://mediaresearch.orf.at.The site contains a wealth of information about the electronic media in Austria. Towards the end of my service in the ORF, I included online research into my program - inspired by the superb performance of ORF ON (cf. http://orf.at and 
my papers on internet research).  Since my retirement at the end of 1998, online market research has become my main field of interest. From 1999 to 2011 I acted as a consultant for GfK, Austria's leading market research firm (http://www.gfk.at/index.en.html) and its partner companies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Building up commercial online market research for CEE included both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Privately, I am interested in political symbols such as flags, arms, and national anthems.
My book "Die Symbole Oesterreichs" ("The Symbols of Austria") is unfortunately out of print.
However, its full text is available on the web at: http://oktogon.at/buchtext.htm.

The materials on political symbols have been supplemented and updated and is available at
http://www.austria-lexikon.at/af/Wissenssammlungen/Symbole

For a list of my other books cf. http://www.peter-diem.at/frontpages/bio.htm

Together with Dr. Trautl Brandstaller I work for the creation of a "House of Austrian History". For details please go to: http://members.aon.at/proaustria 

Since 2009 I am serving as co-publisher of the Austrian Online Knowledge Wiki called “Austria-Forum”: http://austria-forum.org which comprises more than 250.000 text and multi-media entries.

For more information please cf. http://peter-diem.at and http://oktogon.at