Perhaps no other area of contemporary socio-political life needs as much scrutiny as the digital platforms we use every day. Yet the fast-evolving development of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other services, and uncertainty around how they will affect our personal and political lives, can make sustained scholarship almost impossible. Such is the paradoxical challenge facing two-time CCSF recipient Robert Gorwa as he finishes his PhD in International Relations at Oxford.
Robert’s interest in how our digital selves interact with the political realm was sparked before he started his PhD. His BA in International Relations at UBC included a collaborative project on how digitally mediated conflict impacted Canadian diasporas. Upon graduation, he studied the “social science of the internet” at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII).
His thesis focuses on issues galvanizing both policymakers and those who inhabit the digital platforms that he is studying. These ‘netizens’ have clashed, vociferously, on issues such as privacy, online abuse, and how these platforms could damage our democracies. Robert’s research into the tense relationships between citizens, states, and the multi-national creators of these platforms is timely. What governance and security questions arise due to platforms such as Facebook? Can Google and Facebook be held accountable? Robert has gone beyond simply researching digital platforms – his supervisor sees him as a leading scholar on content moderation and platform governance.
And he is increasingly stepping into the role of public intellectual, at a prolific rate. A google search of his name along with Foreign Affairs throws up “Quantum Leap” – an article on the international relations implications of quantum technology, co-authored with UBC Professor Taylor Owen. The past two years sees him writing – and this is just a miniscule amount of his output – for the LA Review of Books, and the Washington Post (on Facebook’s purported role in the interference with the 2016 US election). And he has co-written two pieces with Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash: a 2019 report entitled “Glasnost: Nine Ways that Facebook Could Make Itself a Better Forum for Free Speech and Democracy” for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and a book chapter in “Social Media and Democracy”.
This is all alongside the required academic publishing. A recent paper – “What is Platform Governance?” – was published in Information, Communication & Society. He also finds time to do public events – whether commenting on the UK’s Online Harms White Paper at the LSE Media Policy Project, or debating tech employees at Oxford’s Bonavero Institute for Human Rights.
The pace shows no sign of slowing down – with Facebook creating an external appeals body to oversee its content policy. Robert will interview key stakeholders as the project develops. And, although his work is global, he will continue exploring the Canadian context. He’s firmly committed to the goal of, in his words, “creating a fairer, more just, digital future”.
