Stephan Weichert is co-founder and board member of the VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience and co-director of the Nonprofit-Journalism-Project (npj.news).

As a media scientist and publicist, Stephan Weichert analyzes the consequences of digitalization for society, democracy and politics. After 20 years as a university lecturer and director of various degree programs and education programs in media and journalism, in 2021 Weichert founded the independent VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience that he manages together with journalist Alexander von Streit.

Parallel to his career as a professor and media researcher in Hamburg and Berlin, Weichert worked as an author and freelance journalist for various German daily and weekly newspapers, radio and online. In 2009, he co-founded the non-profit think & do tank VOCER.org, which promotes young talents in journalism and sustainable innovation in the media.

Weichert has published and edited more than 30 books on digital transformation, most recently the essay collection Resilient Journalism. How to make public discourse more robust (2022). Before that, he was a director and author of the 45-minute TV documentary Media Makers of tomorrow. A German Journey into the Digital (first aired March 2021, WDR/3sat, Eco Media).

Weichert is involved in numerous associations and juries, e.g. he was serving as a jury member for the Adolf Grimme Television Award and as vice chairman of the advisory board of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin. He is also a founding member of the Forum for Nonprofit Journalism. In 2014, he received the Media Ethics Award for his outstanding journalistic publications on digital transformation.

Weichert lives with his wife and two children in Hamburg, Germany.

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