FiF Lecture 2022 with Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem

Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?

Topic: „Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?

When: 11.05.2022, 5 pm

Where: Lichtenberg-Haus, Dieburger Straße 241

With Professor Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem once again the FiF succeeded in convincing a scientist who is known beyond the subject boundaries to participate in the FiF Lecture 2022. Professor Hoffmann-Riem was a Judge at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1999-2008, and subsequently a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. Since 2012 he is Professor of Law and Innovation at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. He was one of the initiators of the “Charter of Fundamental Digital Rights of the European Union” in 2016.

Poster for the lecture 2022 with Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem

As an expert in information and media law, he discussed in his FiF Lecture the challenges of the constitutional state caused by digitalisation, especially by the globally active internet groups such as Facebook and Google, acting as oligopolies. They impact the access to information and its content and have considerable economic and political power. They control the behaviour of their service users in many aspects and influence the way of public communication. They act according to their own rules and are only to a limited extent subject to sovereign law. What is the reason for it? Which possibilities are there to guarantee the freedom and plurality of communication and the autonomy of their users with the help of national and trans-national law?

These were the key issues of the FiF Lecture 2022 with Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem. The event took place on 11.05.2022 (Lichtenberg-Haus, Dieburger Straße 241) 5 pm under the title: „Power of information intermediaries – powerlessness of law?"

This event couldn't take place in 2020 and was postponed to 11.5.2022.