Hi! I am a researcher based at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

(If you're looking for a formal introduction for an event, I suggest that you navigate to my bios page.)

My research is at the intersection of technology and global regulation, bridging political science, law, and media studies. I'm conceptually most interested in the politics and institutions that shape public/private governance in the platformized digital economy, with a focus on social networks and AI systems. Empirically, I mainly do qualitative work, with a focus on textual, archival, and interview-based forms of policy tracing and analysis. I collaborate most actively with legal scholars and computer scientists, but also work happily with historians, communications researchers, political economists, and STS scholars.

I received my doctorate from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where my dissertation recieved the Winchester Prize. I previously studied at the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of British Columbia, and have conducted research at the Reuters Institute and European Studies Centre in Oxford as well as the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill. I have held fellowships or other visiting positions at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) in DC, USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Stanford's Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin.

My first book, The Politics of Platform Regulation, a comparative empirical study of the development of 'online safety' frameworks in the transnational context, was published open access in 2024 by Oxford University Press. My second book, Bad Computers, an investigation of the logics of governance in the AI stack, is a collaboration with the law and technology scholar Michael Veale and is forthcoming with MIT Press. I co-founded the Platform Governance Research Network (PlatGovNet) and organize a regular research seminar in Berlin on digital policy issues.

Publications

See also Google Scholar.

Closed publisher links are pink. Links to open access publications and preprints are green.

Books

  • Bad Computers: How the Wider AI Stack Can Stop the Worst AI Misuse.
    Michael Veale and Robert Gorwa, Forthcoming, MIT Press, 2027.
    A detailed socio-technical examination of the past, present and emerging governance practices of key AI intermediaries: cloud providers, hardware and operating system firms, network gatekeepers, model hosting platforms, communications services providers, and more.
    Preprint
  • The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation.
    Robert Gorwa, 2024.
    A comparative emprical analysis of the emergence of 'online safety' regulation in Europe, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, driven by more than 5 years of original primary research and data collection.
    Oxford University Press PDF

Articles

  • The Great Sysop: Elon Musk, X, and the Emergence of Platform Illiberalism.
    João C. Magalhães, Clara Iglesias Keller, and Robert Gorwa, 2026
    Through a novel conceptualization of institutional change in Trust and Safety, and an analysis of a dataset of over 1500 events related to X’s organizational transformation, we outline what we call a new mode of weaponized platform governance: platform illiberalism.
    New Media & Society SocArXiv
  • Moderating Model Marketplaces: Platform Governance Puzzles for AI Intermediaries.
    Robert Gorwa and Michael Veale, 2024
    AI systems, which can both ‘contain’ content and be open-ended tools, present one of the trickiest platform governance challenges seen to date. We provide case studies of several incidents across three illustrative platforms – Hugging Face, GitHub and Civitai – to examine how model marketplaces moderate models.
    Law, Innovation and Technology SocArXiv
  • Platform Lobbying: Policy Influence Strategies and the EU's Digital Services Act.
    Robert Gorwa, Grzegorz Lechowski, Daniel Schneiß, 2024
    Drawing on freedom of information requests, the EU Transparency register, and civil society watchdog reporting, we provide an analysis of how platform firms sought to influence EU policymakers during the EU Digital Services Act negotiations.
    Internet Policy Review
  • AI and Global Governance: Modalities, Rationales, Tensions.
    Michael Veale, Kira Matus, and Robert Gorwa, 2023
    Actors around the world are engaged in building a governance regime around AI. But what exactly the “it” is that is being governed, how, by who, and why—these are all less clear. We attempt to shine some light on those questions, synthesizing literature on AI, the governance of computing, and regulation and governance more broadly.
    Annual Review of Law and Social Science
  • Who are the Stakeholders in Platform Governance?
    Robert Gorwa, 2022
    The goal of this essay is to more systemically explore the key actors involved in platform governance than has been done so far. Who are the key “platform governance stakeholders”? And what combinations of actors matter in different domains of platform governance?
    Yale Journal of Law & Technology
  • Elections, Institutions, and the Regulatory Politics of Platform Governance: The Case of the German NetzDG.
    Robert Gorwa, 2021
    Although a growing body of scholarship has emerged to assess the normative and legal dimensions of major developments in 'platform regulation', the legal scholarship on intermediary liability leaves key questions about why and how these policies are developed, shaped, and adopted unanswered. The goal of this article is thus to provide a deep empirical case study into the German NetzDG from a regulatory politics perspective, highlighting the importance of political and regulatory factors in its emergence.
    Telecommunications Policy
    SocArXiv
  • Algorithmic Content Moderation: Technical and Political Challenges in the Automation of Platform Governance.
    Robert Gorwa, Reuben Binns, and Christian Katzenbach, 2020
    An accessible technical primer on how algorithmic moderation works, examining some of the existing automated tools used by major platforms to handle copyright infringement, terrorism and toxic speech, and exploring key political and ethical issues for these systems as the reliance on them grows.
    Big Data & Society
  • The Platform Governance Triangle: Conceptualising the Informal Regulation of Online Content.
    Robert Gorwa, 2019
    A growing number of voluntary and non-binding informal governance initiatives have recently been proposed as attractive ways to rein in Facebook, Google, and other platform companies hosting user-generated content. Drawing on the literature on transnational corporate governance, this article reviews a number of informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe. I discuss three key dynamics shaping the success of informal governance arrangements: actor competencies, ‘legitimation politics,’ and inter-actor relationships of power and coercion.
    Internet Policy Review
  • What is Platform Governance?
    Robert Gorwa, 2019
    Amidst growing calls to regulate these companies and make them more democratically accountable, and a host of policy interventions that are actively being pursued in Europe and beyond, a better understanding of how platform practices, policies, and affordances (in effect, how platforms govern) interact with the external political forces trying to shape those practices and policies is needed. This article offers an interdisciplinary research agenda for platform governance, a concept intended to capture the layers of governance relationships structuring interactions between key parties in today's platform society.
    Information, Communication & Society
    SocArXiv
  • Unpacking the Social Media Bot: A Typology to Guide Research and Policy
    Robert Gorwa and Douglas Guilbeault, 2018
    Since the earliest writings on bots in the 1990s, there has been substantial confusion as to exactly what a “bot” is and what it does. We provide a typology of different types of bots, provide clear guidelines for better categorizing political automation, and unpack the impact that it can have on contemporary technology policy.
    Policy & Internet
    ArXiv

Chapters

  • Democratic Transparency in the Platform Society
    Robert Gorwa and Timothy Garton Ash, 2020
    In Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform
    Cambridge University Press
  • Big Tech Hits the Diplomatic Circuit: Norm Entrepreneurship, Policy Advocacy, and Microsoft's Cybersecurity Tech Accord
    Robert Gorwa and Anton Peez, 2020
    In Governing Cyberspace: Behavior, Power, and Diplomacy
    Rowman & Littlefield
  • Prayer-Bots and Religious Worship on Twitter: A Call for a Wider Research Agenda
    Carl Ohman, Robert Gorwa, and Luciano Floridi, 2019
    In Ethics, Governance, and Policies in Artificial Intelligence
    Springer
    Minds & Machines
  • Poland: Unpacking the Ecosystem of Social Media Manipulation
    Robert Gorwa, 2018
    In Computational Propaganda: Parties, Politicians, and Manipulation on Social Media
    Oxford University Press

Reviews

  • Can Platforms Be Democratic?
    On Schneider's Governable Spaces and Gowder's Networked Leviathan, 2024
    Jacobin
  • Digital Oligarchy
    On Jillian York's Silicon Values, 2022
    LA Review of Books
  • How We Can Socialize Big Tech
    On James Muldoon's Platform Socialism, 2022
    Jacobin
  • The Last of the Unicorns
    On Siva Vaidhyanathan's Anti-Social Media, 2019
    LA Review of Books
  • Platform Moderation and its Discontents
    On Tarleton Gillespie's Custodians of the Internet, 2018
    LA Review of Books

Reports

  • Real Time Threats: Analysing Trust and Safety Practices for Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) Prevention on Livestreaming Platforms
    Robert Gorwa and Dhanaraj Thakur, 2024
    Center for Democracy and Technology
  • What Can Be Done? Digital Media Policy Options for Strengthening European Democracy
    Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Robert Gorwa, and Madeleine de Cock Buning, 2019
    Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
  • Lessons In Resilience: Canada's Digital Media Ecosystem and the 2019 Election
    Taylor Owen, Aengus Bridgeman, Robert Gorwa et al., 2019
    Public Policy Forum
  • Glasnost: Nine Ways that Facebook Could Make Itself a Better Forum for Free Speech and Democracy
    Timothy Garton Ash, Robert Gorwa, and Danae Metaxa, 2019
    Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Commentaries

  • Brazil Shows Platform Illiberalism is Big Tech’s New Normal
    If platform infrastructures cannot be regarded as neutral spaces to be studied, but as tools being wielded strategically by their politically motivated owners, where does that leave us?
    Clara Iglesias Keller, Robert Gorwa, and João C. Magalhães, 2026.
    Tech Policy Press
  • The Informal Future of Digital Governance
    Short video essay for the SSRC on transnational coordinating mechanisms for hard digital governance issues, touching on the C2PA, GIFCT, and more.
    Robert Gorwa, 2025
    Mediawell
  • Durov's Arrest and the Shadow Politics of Platform Regulation
    A summary of my book's arguments and a look at some of the actors and interests driving the recent battle between French law enfocement and Telegram.
    Robert Gorwa, 2024
    Tech Policy Press
  • Political Capital and Informal Platform Governance
    Blog post in symposium on 'jawboning' and informal forms of platform-state interactions.
    Robert Gorwa, 2024
    Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression
  • European Security Officials Double Down on Client-Side Scanning
    A few reflections on the transnational politics (and interest groups) driving EU draft CSAM proposals
    Robert Gorwa, 2022
    Lawfare
  • Expanding the Debate About Content Moderation
    A 'roundtable' piece with short inputs from a number of major names in the content moderation research space (honoured to be included!)
    Tarleton Gillespie et al., 2020
    Internet Policy Review
  • As Platforms Rely Less on Human Content Moderators, What's at Stake?
    Short invited contribution reflecting on the news that major platforms were ramping up their use of automated content screening tools in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic
    Robert Gorwa, 2020
    Centre for International Governance Innovation
  • Regulating Platforms Softly
    An essay reflecting on informal and co-regulatory models for platform regulation; part of essay collection on 'Models for Platform Governance'
    Robert Gorwa, 2019
    Centre for International Governance Innovation
  • Big Tech Hits the Diplomatic Circuit
    Summary of book chapter looking at the growing and unique role played by Microsoft in international digital policy - and their unique 'diplomatic' lobbying strategy
    Robert Gorwa and Anton Peez, 2019
    Berlin Policy Journal
  • What Policymakers Can Do For Europe's Digital Media Ecosystem
    Summary of RISJ report looking at sustainable media policy suggestions for the von Der Leyen Commission
    Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Madeleine de Cock Buning, and Robert Gorwa, 2019
    The Conversation
  • The Shifting Definition of Platform Governance
    Invited contribution with some general reflections on how to understand and define 'platform governance' - both as a field of research and as a terrain of political struggle
    Robert Gorwa, 2019
    Centre for International Governance Innovation
  • How Mark Zuckerberg Could Save Facebook From Itself
    Op-ed with summary takeaways from RISJ 'Glasnost' report looking at the slow increase in Facebook's community standards-related transparency in 2018-2019
    Robert Gorwa and Danae Metaxa, 2019
    WIRED
  • Facebook's Decency Conundrum
    Print mag piece with some thoughts on the challenges of moderating borderline content (like 'art')
    Robert Gorwa, 2018
    WIRED
  • Twitter has a Bot Problem, and Wikipedia Might Have the Solution
    Op-ed looking at Wikipedia's bot classification and reporting system, and comparing that to Twitter's decision to privilige developer access over content moderation
    Robert Gorwa, 2017
    Quartz
  • Tinder Nightmares
    Op-ed applying some reflections from our Policy & Internet article on bots to an interesting (and potentially problematic) use of automated Tinder bots for electioneering in the UK
    Robert Gorwa and Douglas Guilbeault, 2017
    WIRED
  • Quantum Leap
    Essay discussing developments in quantum computing (and quantum resistant cryptography), and its potential implications for geopolitics
    Taylor Owen and Robert Gorwa, 2016
    Foreign Affairs