Stephan Dreyer

Co-Head Research Group Growing Up in Digital Media Environments

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.