Lessons learned? How open government research can inform platform transparency

Abstract

The emerging field of platform regulation is taking on transparency as one of its core principles. How does this new project relate to the existing body of research around public transparency and open government? This essay offers some preliminary reflections. First, it reviews common disclosure policies for platforms and compares them to government transparency precedents. Second, it discusses important differences and commonalities between transparency and accountability in these two respective domains. Platform transparency, I argue, should take heed of the critical turn in government transparency research over the last two decades, and adopt the same focus on compliance, usage and impact as important topics for (empirical) research. Looking forward, researchers across both fields should aim to develop hybrid perspectives, which combine government and platform transparency resources with a view to charting the interactions between these entities, not as strictly rival powers but as frequent collaborators.