Martin Fertmann successfully defended his doctoral thesis in law on the topic of “Human Rights Socialization on Online Platforms: On the Self-Description and External Description of the ‘Meta Oversight Board.” We offer our heartfelt congratulations!
The media law dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut and at Universität Hamburg.
In his work, Fertmann examines the “Oversight Board” created by Meta, an independent body that decides on content moderation issues on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. He shows how the board sees itself and how it is evaluated from the outside, especially in light of international human rights. The thesis demonstrates that the Oversight Board surpasses corporate regulations to uphold human rights standards, establishing itself as a significant participant in the global discourse on freedom of expression on online platforms.
Martin Fertmann is part of the HBI’s second research program on “Regulatory Structures and the Emergence of Rules in Online Spaces.” He researches the private regulatory activities of large platform companies and their compatibility with international human rights standards.
Since joining the Institute in October 2020, he has published numerous articles in his main areas of research and presented his work at conferences in Germany and abroad. He has also co-organized conferences on transparency in technology regulation, internet governance, and international human rights standards. Martin Fertmann participated in a research sprint at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and conducted research in Paris at the LIP6 Institute (Sorbonne University and the French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS) and at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo. He is a fellow in the Transatlantic Digital Debates program at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin and the Open Technology Institute at New America in Washington. He is also a member of the EU COST Action Global Digital Human Rights Network.
Martin Fertmann studied law at Universität Hamburg and the China-EU School of Law in Beijing. During his studies, he worked as a research assistant for several international commercial law firms and volunteered at the Cyber Law Clinic at Universität Hamburg.
In addition to his work at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research, he was a member of the graduate college “Law and Its Teaching in the Digital Transformation” at the Center for Law in the Digital Transformation and the Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy Graduate School of Law at Universität Hamburg.