He made major contributions to the field of mass communication, primarily in the area of media effects research.

He continued working in this field when he was a Research associate at the Institute of Communication, Music and Media Studies at Technische Universität Berlin from 1988 to 1993, which is where he achieved his PhD in 1992.

[1] After his time in Berlin, he spent a year working as a visiting professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

He then assumed the professorship of Media and communication studies at the Mannheim School of Humanities in 2010, which is where he is still currently teaching, doing research and publishing.

Vorderer was awarded "Yangtze River Scholar" by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China in 2015 for outstanding achievements in the research of new media and technological development.