Platform transparency: A cross-country analysis of policymakers discourse on digital platforms' governance and transparency

Digital platforms have spread so widely that we face a question: what are the boundaries? (Gawer, 2021). Two distinguishing attributions of digital platforms, heavily depending on user data and benefitting from network effects, usually result in a monopolistic environment and increase the probability of fundamental rights violations and unfair competition (Kira et al., 2021; Mlčúchová, 2022). Such extensive societal and economic power brings together the abuse issue, especially regarding privacy violations and unfair competition, thus requiring strong governance (Gawer & Srnicek, 2021). However, the lack of information about how digital platforms operate has led to challenges in regulating them (Mallon, 2021). Self-regulation has been suggested as the best strategy (Cusumano et al. 2021). Nevertheless, the high number of lawsuits against big five tech companies has caused increasing attention from policymakers of different countries (Cusumano, 2022). Most recently, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) have entered into force in the EU, emphasizing transparency. Now, the platforms need to revise their business models to comply with regulations. The study aims to track the evolution of transparency expectations of policymakers in European parliamentary discourse (Leone de Castris, 2024). It tries to answer the question of "How do policymakers in different European countries understand digital platform transparency?" by mapping the parliamentary discourse of 17 countries between 2015-2022, using a computational grounded theory framework (Nelson, 2020) on ParlaMint data (Kuzman, 2023). Findings show that the vulnerability of users defines transparency expectations.