Robert Gorwa
Robert Gorwa is a postdoctoral fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. 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 Marchioness of 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. He has also 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. 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 and other NGOs, and is currently working on a second book, in collaboration with Michael Veale at University College London.
Featured works
The Politics of Platform Regulation (2024), available open access through Oxford University Press.
“Real Time Threats: Analysis of Trust and Safety Practices for Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) Prevention on Livestreaming Platforms.” Center for Democracy & Technology.
“The platform governance triangle: conceptualising the informal regulation of online content.” 2019. Internet Policy Review 8 (2). DOI: 10.14763/2019.2.1407.
