Dr. Stephan Dreyer is a Senior Researcher in Media Law and Media Governance at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institute (HBI). Together with Dr. Claudia Lampert, he heads the research group Growing Up in Digital Media Environments. At the centre of his work lies the interdisciplinary study and scholarly support of the legal frameworks of children growing up in digital media environments. As an expert at the intersections of digital child safety, technical and AI-based approaches to safety, empowerment and participation, and questions of children’s data protection, he examines issues of media regulation and children’s rights in the face of new technologies, services and children’s patterns of use. In addition, he researches the consequences of and regulatory approaches to disinformation, as well as the scope and limitations of transparency and information obligations as a regulatory resource. He also conducts comparative studies, informed by governance theory, of the systems and instruments of information- and communication-related governance.
He has worked at the HBI as a research associate since 2002. Before that, he studied law at the University of Hamburg, with a specialisation in Information and Communication Law. In his 2018 doctoral dissertation, he analysed legal decision-making under uncertainty in the field of youth media protection, working out how the differing margins of discretion available to the legislature, supervisory authorities and self-regulatory bodies shape the way this uncertainty is processed.
Activities Outside of the Institute
Stephan Dreyer is the legal spokesperson of the complaints committee and the expert commission of the FSM, chair of the board of trustees of the FSF, and a member of the advisory board of the German Safer Internet Centre, klicksafe.de. He has been appointed to the advisory board of the USK as a legal expert and carries out reviews as chair of the USK Appeals Committee and, at USK.online, as a youth-protection expert. Stephan Dreyer is a member of the editorial board of the Asser/Springer book series “Information Technology and Law Series”.
