Robert Gorwa

PhD Student, Researcher

University of Oxford

Who am I?

I’m a doctoral student in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, and a researcher currently working with Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Digital Democracy Project at McGill University.

What do I do?

I research content moderation, platform governance, and the use of automation online. My work brings together perspectives from political science with a range of interdisciplinary approaches to digital media research and platform studies to better understand dynamics of power, regulation, and contestation around contemporary technology policy issues.

Where can you find my work?

My academic articles have been published or are forthcoming in Information, Communication & Society, Policy & Internet, and Internet Policy Review. I also enjoy writing for magazines and public audiences: I contribute to the Los Angeles Review of Books and have written on tech and politics for Wired UK, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and other popular outlets.

Research Areas & Projects

Content Moderation

Exploring the global political impact of content decisions.

Platform Governance

How do platforms govern, and how should they be governed?

Cybersecurity

How do private actors shape the global cybersecurity conversation?

Bots

What is the political role of automated agents online?

Journal Articles

What is Platform Governance?

This article seeks to provide a first mapping of the interdisciplinary research agenda for platform governance, overview emerging governance modes, and discuss some of the normative principles which promise to shape platform governance going forward.

Robert Gorwa

Information, Communication & Society 22 (6), 854-871, 2019.

Preprint Project Online First

Unpacking the Social Media Bot: A Typology to Guide Research and Policy

In this article, we provide a history and typology of different types of bots, provide clear guidelines to better categorize political automation and unpack the impact that it can have on contemporary technology policy, and outline the main challenges and ambiguities that will face both researchers and legislators concerned with bots in the future.

Robert Gorwa, Douglas Guilbeault

Policy & Internet, 2018.

Project Online First arXiv

Other Publications

Filter

Carl Öhman, Robert Gorwa, Luciano Floridi (2019). Prayer-Bots and Religious Worship on Twitter: A Call for a Wider Research Agenda. Minds & Machines.

Project Open Access

Robert Gorwa, Max Smeets (2019). Cyber Conflict in Political Science: A Review of Methods and Literature. International Studies Association (Toronto, March 27-30).

PDF Project

Timothy Garton Ash, Robert Gorwa, Danaë Metaxa (2019). Glasnost? Nine ways Facebook can make itself a better forum for free speech and democracy. Oxford, UK: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Project Report

Robert Gorwa, Anton Peez (2018). Tech Companies as Cybersecurity Norm Entrepreneurs: A Critical Analysis of Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Tech Accord. Hague Conference on Responsible Behaviour in Cyberspace, (The Hague, November 5-7).

Project SocArXiv

Robert Gorwa (2018). Unpacking the Ecosystem of Social Media Manipulation: A Polish Case Study. Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media, edited by Samuel Woolley and Philip Howard. Oxford University Press.

Project OUP Google Books

Robert Gorwa, Philip Howard (2018). Studying Politically Vulnerable Communities Online: Ethical Dilemmas, Questions, and Solutions. ICWSM Workshop on Exploring Ethical Trade-offs in Social Media Research (Stanford, June 25).

arXiv

Robert Gorwa, Douglas Guilbeault (2018). What Should We Do About Political Automation? Challenges for Policy and Research. International Communication Association (Prague, May 24-28).

Project arXiv

Douglas Guilbeault, Robert Gorwa (2018). Current Challenges for Bot Policy and Foreign Interference. Washington, DC: Campaign Legal Centre.

Project Report

Robert Gorwa (2017). Computational Propaganda in Poland: False Amplifiers and the Digital Public Sphere. Oxford, UK: Oxford Internet Institute.

Project Report

Writing

Essays & Reviews

“The Last of the Unicorns.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 2019.
“Facebook’s Decency Conundrum.” Wired Magazine (UK), November/December 2018.
“Platform Moderation and Its Discontents.” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2018.
“Tinder Nightmares.” Wired (UK), July 2017 (with Doug Guilbeault).
“Quantum Leap: China’s Satellite and the New Arms Race.” Foreign Affairs, September 2016 (with Taylor Owen).

Op-eds & Blogs

Outlining self-governance policy suggestions for Facebook, and summarizing some insights from our RISJ report on content moderation and free expression. Wired (UK), March 2019 (with Danaë Metaxa). Reblogged at OxPol.
Thinking about community-based solutions for Twitter’s ‘bot problem’. Quartz, October 2017.
On Facebook, foreign interference, and sharing data with researchers. Washington Post, May 2017 (with Phil Howard).
Why detecting ‘Russian bots’ isn’t as easy as people seem to think. NetPolitics, March 2017.
Reflecting on global privacy and security coordination problems after the Dyn DDOS attack. OpenCanada, November 2016.
A conversation about quantum computing, R&D, and state power. World Politics Review, October 2016 (with Taylor Owen).
Talking to a colleague about the ethics of doing research in conflict zones. The Envoy, October 2015.