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Robert Gorwa & Timothy Garton Ash

seeks to achieve in theory and how it is commonly conceptualized as furthering
traditional democratic values. In the second section, we provide a necessarily
not comprehensive survey of major transparency initiatives as enacted by
platform companies in the social media era, with a focus on the changes that
ﬁrms have made following the 2016 US election. Finally, we discuss
transparency in practice, with a summary of critical insights from the “digital
turn” in transparency studies, which provides ample caution against
transparency as a panacea for democratic accountability and good governance.

from bentham to blockchain: the historical
evolution of the transparency ideal

that have

substantially
Social_Media_and_Democracy