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Shortest (>20 words)
Robert Gorwa is a political scientist and technology governance scholar at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).
Short (35)
Robert Gorwa is a researcher at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB). His books include The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation (Oxford University Press, 2024), and Bad Computers, forthcoming with MIT Press.
Medium (125)
Dr Robert Gorwa is a political scientist and technology governance scholar at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB). He studies the politics of technology policymaking, with special interest paid to the institutions and socio-technical regulatory arrangements shaping governance in the digital economy. His first book, The Politics of Platform Regulation, a comparative empirical study of the development of new `online safety' frameworks in the transnational context, was published open access in 2024 by Oxford University Press. His second book, Bad Computers, coauthored with Michael Veale, is an investigation of the logics of governance in the AI stack, and is forthcoming with MIT Press. In 2026, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to pursue a new line of research on the politics of AI alignment.
Long and Extra-Formal (315)
Robert Gorwa is a research fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB). His work bridges politics, law, and media studies to engage conceptually and empirically with the latest developments in global technology policymaking, taking a special interest in emerging socio-technical governance infrastructures and institutions in the platform economy.
Gorwa studied politics, history, and economics in Montreal and Vancouver before moving to Oxford to do graduate work in media and internet studies. A renewed interest in digital public policy and regulation culminated in a DPhil from Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations, as well as collaborative research conducted at the Oxford Internet Institute, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and the European Studies Centre at St. Antony's College (where he was a Dahrendorf Scholar). His doctoral work on the transnational contestation of platform governance won the university's Winchester Prize, and was revised, expanded, and published as The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation by Oxford University Press in 2024.
Gorwa joined the WZB in 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher. He held fellowships and other visiting positions at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, Stanford's Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, as well as the Weizenbaum and Alexander von Hulboldt Internet Institutes. His work has been funded by the European Research Council, the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada, and published in leading digital policy venues like New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, and ACM FAccT. He has presented his work for policymakers in various jurisdictions, including at the US-EU Trade and Technology Council and the EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy; his work has been cited by the US Federal Trade Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and in major international AI policy reports. He has consulted for Human Rights Watch, the Civitates European Democracy Fund, and other NGOs, and sits on the editorial board of Platforms & Society. His second book, in collaboration with Michael Veale, is forthcoming from MIT Press.