The Politics of Platform Regulation – seminar by Robert Gorwa (WZB, Berlin)

As digital platforms have become more integral to not just how we live, but also to how we do politics, the rules governing online expression, behaviour, and interaction created by large multinational technology firms – popularly termed ‘content moderation,’ ‘platform governance,’ or ‘trust and safety’ – have increasingly become the target of government regulatory efforts seeking to shape them. In his new book (published open access by Oxford University Press), Robert Gorwa provides a conceptual and empirical analysis of this important and emerging tech policy terrain of ‘platform regulation.’ In this talk, we'll discuss how, why, and where exactly these developments are happening? Why now? And how should we best understand the vast array of strategies being deployed across jurisdictions to tackle this issue?

This seminar is jointly organised by Dr. Gavin Sullivan’s UKRI research project, Infra-Legalities: Global Security Infrastructures, AI and International Law and the Edinburgh Law School’s SCRIPT Centre on law and technology research. It will be chaired by Lillian Edwards, Emeritus Professor of Law, Information & Society at Newcastle University.

Bio: Robert Gorwa is a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Social Science Centre. He studies the politics of technology policy, with a special interest in platform governance and emerging socio-technical regulatory arrangements in the digital economy. He received his doctorate from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and is currently a fellow at the Centre for Democracy and Technology and at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Host or Publisher Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh