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 interested in platform regulation, content moderation, and other transnational digital policy challenges.
I’m currently a fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin. I’m also affiliated with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Centre for Technology and Global Affairs at Oxford, the the Project on Internet and Democracy at Stanford, and the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill.

What do I do?

My work brings perspectives from political science and international relations together with a range of interdisciplinary approaches to digital media research, in an effort to better understand the politics behind various recent tech policy issues. This year, I’ve been focusing on platform governance, with two published articles: a general research overview and conceptual map, and a more focused exploration of informal initiatives and ‘soft’ regulation.
I’ve also researched content moderation, corporate transparency, disinformation, and social media bots. I contribute to the Los Angeles Review of Books and have written about these topics for Wired UK, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and other popular outlets.

Updates

Publications and News

Preprint of chapter on transparency and platform companies

Oct 6, 2019

Article on 'informal content regulation' published in IPR

Oct 6, 2019

Recent Projects

Platform Governance

Exploring the regulation and governance of/by platform companies.

Content Moderation

Exploring the global political impact of content decisions.

Private Cybersecurity

How do private actors shape global cybersecurity practices?

Understanding Bots

What is the political role of automated agents online?

Latest Academic Articles

The Platform Governance Triangle

Grounding voluntary and non-binding governance regimes for platforms in the the traditional trasnational and corporate governance literatures.

Robert Gorwa

Internet Policy Review 8 (2), 2019.

Project Open Access

A first mapping of the interdisciplinary research agenda for platform governance, an overview of emerging governance modes, and a discussion 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

More Publications

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Robert Gorwa, Timothy Garton Ash (2019). Democratic Transparency in the Platform Society. In Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field, edited by Nate Persily and Josh Tucker. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Project SocArxiv

Carl Öhman, Robert Gorwa, Luciano Floridi (2019). Prayer-Bots and Religious Worship on Twitter: A Call for a Wider Research Agenda. Minds & Machines 29 (2), 331–338.

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).

Project SocArXiv

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. In Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media, edited by Samuel Woolley and Philip Howard. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Project OUP Google Books

Robert Gorwa, Douglas Guilbeault (2018). Unpacking the Social Media Bot: A Typology to Guide Research and Policy. Policy & Internet.

Online First arXiv

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

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

“Big Tech Hits the Diplomatic Circuit.” Berlin Policy Journal & Internationale Politik, July/August 2019 (with Anjo Peez).
“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.