Zukunftsaufgaben der Digitalisierung für Staat, Recht und Gesellschaft

This article examines the strategic design of digital transformation from a legal perspective and analyzes how normative guidelines can help shape future societal, technological, and economic changes. The focus is on legal innovation research, which, using foresight methods, provides a solid foundation for normatively relevant decisions – decisions that affect the state, legislation, economy, and society alike. The short study highlights key challenges, such as the development of viable normative concepts in the face of multiple future scenarios and discusses to what extent state and regional actors are obligated to shape digital transformation in a socially responsible way. In particular, the protection of freedom of expression is emphasized, which is safeguarded by constitutional guarantees and challenged – in practice – by private systems of speech governance on platforms. The analysis also addresses hybrid communication governance, where state and private regulations intertwine to define the framework for digital discourse, including algorithmic moderation tools. The discourse surrounding state "censorship" of social media is explored here, clearly differentiating between public-law regulation and the private autonomy of digital platforms. Furthermore, current EU legal acts such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) are presented, which, through transparency, accountability, and information obligations, limit platform power while ensuring the protection of fundamental rights in digital communication spaces. The state's role also extends to maintaining an independent communication infrastructure in public-service broadcasting, whose constitutional foundation secures central democratic functions. Overall, the article emphasizes that digital transformation should not be understood as an external compulsion but as a process that can be shaped, requiring harnessing the power of regulation to make sure that technological transformations are optimized for societal goals, intergenerational justice and global solidarity.