Digital intermediaries and transparency reports as strategic communications

Abstract

To enrich our understanding of the challenges of realizing meaningful transparency and accountability in platform governance, this study seeks to examine the institutionalization of “transparency reports” among digital intermediaries. Conceptually, it innovates by centering transparency reports as corporate social responsibility disclosures and by elaborating an argument that these voluntary disclosures are an emerging institutional practice that is shaped by isomorphic pressures. In contrast with the established analysis of other sectors of economic activity, sustained research on corporate social responsibility in the information and communications technology sector is underdeveloped. In addition to enriching the corporate social responsibility literature on digital intermediaries, this study makes a two-fold theoretical contribution to platform governance literature. First, it offers empirical data to support an emerging industry norm diffused among firms across jurisdictions. Second, it offers an explanatory rationale for both Big Tech and small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). For market leaders, who are under increased scrutiny as “new governors” in the online environment, transparency reports are issued as legitimacy-seeking strategic communications. For SMEs–animated by mimetic isomorphism–transparency reports are issued to imitate market leaders and virtue signal.