Impact case study database

Professor Howard and the Computational Propaganda (ComProp) team’s research findings have informed and shaped policy on online disinformation in the UK, the EU and the US, and they have been recognised by policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic as ‘“pioneers” in the field of online disinformation’, [C1], having ‘ produced the first wave of real research on how authoritarian regimes interfere in the elections of democracies using social media’ [C2]. According to the Head of the European Political Strategy Centre, the European Commission’s in-house policy think tank, ‘Prof Howard was one of the first researchers to expose the pervasiveness of politically-motivated bots and fake news on social media with his work on Brexit and the 2016 elections in the United States’ [R2, R3].

Howard has engaged extensively with policymakers to highlight the causes and consequences of online disinformation identified in his research, and helped shape policy responses in the UK, EU and US.

UK Policy Impact:

In December 2017, the ComProp team provided evidence to the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry into ‘Disinformation and “fake news”’. This evidence, which outlined the way in which bots and algorithms are being manipulated by social media companies and political actors to spread misinformation and disinformation, along with references to ComProp research, was included in the inquiry’s interim [C3] and final report [C4]. Consequently, the evidence fed directly into recommendations in both reports that the government should impose effective regulation on social media providers and do more to tackle foreign political interference via social media platforms.

Acting on the recommendations of the report, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) outlined the government’s policy for future legislation with the publication of its Online Harms White Paper [C5] in April 2019. The white paper ruminates at length on ComProp research that demonstrates the scale of the problem of online disinformation and proposes a new regulatory framework for internet companies including a statutory duty of care, mandatory reporting and increased transparency for both regulators and independent researchers [C5, Box 12]. The Online Harms legislation, according to the government’s response to the consultation results on the white paper, ‘is a key legislative priority for this government’, with the government stating that though the COVID-19 pandemic had delayed its passage into law, it remained committed to introducing the Online Harms legislation ‘as soon as parliamentary time allows’ in September 2020 [C6, p.11].

Howard helped the DCMS to engage with technology firms by convening closed workshops in March 2018, February 2019, and February 2020 at Oxford. These brought policy makers from the DCMS together with senior staff from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter. According to the DCMS’s Director of Security and Online Harms, Howard’s research standing enabled him ‘to pull together the right group for difficult conversations about the behaviour of the firms and the regulatory options that are now on the table. Such engagement is particularly welcome in helping senior policy makers … to stay on top of the latest research and analysis on complex issues, and to test ideas and review the policy options’ [C2]. He further adds that ‘ Prof Howard has arguably done more than any other independent researcher to hold the attention of policy makers, journalists and the interested public on social media firms and malign influence within the UK’, and has ‘helped maintain the attention of policy makers and journalists on the nuances of the problem and has directly shaped how policy makers in the UK frame and respond to the problem’ [C2].

EU Policy Impact and Code of Practice:

According to the head of the European Commission’s (EC) European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), Howard and his ComProp research team have provided the EC with ‘an intellectual framework and empirical basis that has […] proven valuable for policymaking’ and has enabled the Commission to understand the full severity of online disinformation in Europe [C1].

In 2017, Howard’s research team presented the project’s key research findings and recommendations to EU policymakers at two events. The first, in September 2017, was at a meeting of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in Brussels where Marietje Schaake, MEP, and David Kaye, UN Rapporteur for Freedom of Speech, provided commentary on ComProp’s research findings and recommendations [C7].The second event, in November 2017, was a multi-stakeholder conference on Fake News, where the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, announced the formation of the EC’s ‘High-Level Expert Group on Fake News and online disinformation’. Following the conference, Howard was one of five international experts asked by the EPSC to contribute testimony to a hearing on ‘Preserving Democracy in the Digital Age’ in February 2018, supporting the work of the High-Level Group [C8].

In March 2018 the High-Level Group’s final report, entitled A Multi-dimensional Approach to Disinformation [C9], echoed many of the findings and recommendations that Howard had presented to the EPSC hearing. For example, Howard’s observation in his oral testimony that ‘politicians in the West’ were using communication strategies to spread disinformation to their voters as well as their Russian counterparts [C8] was reflected in High-Level Group’s report in the identification of political actors as purveyors of disinformation in both European and non-European governments and thereby a fundamental cause of online disinformation in the EU [C9, pp.11]. Two of Howard’s suggested solutions—that algorithmic checks should be introduced and that social media firms should share their data with researchers **[C8]**—were also incorporated into the report’s recommendations [C9]. They also recommended a Code of Practice with two out of ten key principles referencing the need for platforms to enable access to data for researchers [C9, pp. 32-33], which was implemented in September 2018 and has been signed by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others [C10]. To facilitate the practical application of this mandate, Howard included senior EU officials along with DCMS staff (as described above) when he convened policy leadership from social media firms for closed sessions in Oxford, in March 2018, February 2019, and February 2020. At the first meeting there were animated discussions about what, if any, the EU should do to regulate the platforms, and the notion of a voluntary Code of Practice was debated. By the second and third meetings the Code [C9] was in place and discussion was about platform responses and their action and inaction around protecting the EU and UK elections. The EPSC confirms that ‘Prof Howard's convening power has made possible direct and frank exchanges with executives of the social media firms’ [C1].

US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Russia Investigation:

In May 2017, Howard authored an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, arguing that the CEOs of the major US social media companies should be compelled to testify before Congress on Russia's use of their platforms to interfere in the 2016 election. This received significant media and public interest, which the chair and vice-chair of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) say triggered ‘a national conversation on this subject that culminated in the Committee's indeed calling these CEOs to testify in September 2017’ [C12].

Prior to this, according to the SSCI chairs, ‘Public knowledge about the use of automation, algorithms, and big-data analytics to manipulate public opinion in targeted ways was exceedingly limited…Insights specific to Russia’s use of these methodologies, or “computational propaganda”, were largely press-based and anecdotal’ [C12]. The SSCI asked Howard to act as a formal consultant for them, and he joined the Committee’s Technical Advisory Group in 2018, provided in-person briefings for senior staff, and aided the preparation of the Committee's inquiries [C12]. He was also asked by the Committee to testify in an open hearing on 1 August 2018 [C13]. The SSCI chairs say that Howard’s research has been ‘essential to the Committee's understanding of how Russia endeavoured to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election’ and its understanding of the ‘ role of social media in the execution of foreign influence operations…his insights have entrenched our resolve to find the appropriate policy response to this vexing concern’ [C11].

Using data provided by social media firms to the SSCI, in December 2018 Howard and social media analytics firm Graphika published the first major analysis of the activities of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a group with links to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence agencies. The Committee’s subsequent report on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election directly references Howard’s research multiple times, including the evidence that Russia’s online campaign was amplified by the IRA’s production of content on social media platforms, citing Howard’s finding that ‘the activity on Twitter constitutes the IRA's first use of a social media platform to conduct information warfare against the United States’ [C12 p. 51]. The report to Congress recommended that ‘Information sharing between the social media companies and law enforcement must improve, and in both directions’, and that the scope of existing federal election laws should be extended to online media to ensure that ‘Americans know the sources of online political advertisements.’ [C12, p. 80]

Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chair of the Committee, is also a co-sponsor of the Honest Ads Act, a bill currently pending in the US Senate, which would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act in this way. The text of the bill cites ComProp research into the scope of Russian social media manipulation in the 2016 election. [C14]

Research into COVID-19 by the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS), led by Professor Melinda Mills, has helped produce a range of evidence-based scientific advice to shape policy-making at the highest level, as well as raising public awareness of measures to stop the spread of the virus. Impacts resulted in a range of COVID-19 responses and prevention measures.

Face-Coverings: Policy and subsequent public practice change

The Royal Society and British Academy face coverings study, led by Mills [R2], highlighted the effectiveness of face coverings in controlling the virus and called for consistent public messaging. R2 was published on 26 June 2020 and presented to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) on 3 July 2020 [E1]. The role of the SPI-B, of which Mills is a member of the coordination team, is to provide expert behavioural advice to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which is chaired by the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance. [Text removed for publication]

In announcing the measure, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, pointing to the ‘scientific evaluation of face coverings and their importance in stopping aerosol droplets’, stated that face coverings offered ‘ a great deal of value’ in controlling the spread of the virus [E3]. Sadiq Khan, The Mayor of London, in response to the announcement, said, ‘I am pleased the Government have finally listened – not just to me – but to the clear overwhelming scientific advice from the World Health Organisation, Royal Society [R2] , British Medical Association and others, who have echoed my calls for face coverings to be mandatory in enclosed and busy places such as shops’ [E2a&b]. The report was also used as part of the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) communications to residents and visitors to London [E2a]. These communications have, according to the Mayoral Health Adviser, ‘impacted not only the population of those living in London (around 9 million), but also millions of visitors (estimated at around 11 million in 2020), and our face coverings page has had hundreds of thousands of unique views since March’ [E2a]. The Mayor of London also directly referenced the report [R2] in his social media, particularly on his Facebook page [E2c].

Vaccine Deployment: Policy and Communication

In a House of Lords debate in November 2020, Lord Patel pointed to the challenges in delivering an effective national vaccination programme: ‘ as Professor Melinda Mills, in a report from the Royal Society and British Academy [R3] , pointed out, not the least [challenge] is honest, transparent public communication free from hyperbole’. In response, Lord Bethell, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care, agreed, stating that ‘ we take seriously our efforts to reach hard-to-reach communities – those who might not have confidence in the Government’ and consequently that Jonathan Van-Tam, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, had been appointed ‘ the face of the vaccine, as it were’ [E4].

A ‘ culturally tailored communication strategy’ and ‘monitoring of vaccine status and vaccine-related beliefs and behaviours alongside existing monitoring of adherence’ were recommendations to come out of the 17 December 2020 SAGE meeting [E6a]. These recommendations featured in two separate documents that were presented at the meeting, one from the SPI-B group regarding the possible impact of the Covid vaccination programme [E6b] and another on factors influencing vaccine uptake [E6c], both of which referenced R3. The UK COVID-19 vaccines delivery plan [E5] consequently made provision for local, targeted communications, as ‘local authorities know their communities best’, citing Hertfordshire County Council as an example of a pro-active local authority, ‘leading significant research in this area’. Hertfordshire’s research, published December 2020, contains a detailed precis of R3 and directly quotes Mills’ statement that local authorities need to ‘generate an open dialogue that addresses misinformation and does not dismiss people’s real vaccine concerns and hesitancy’ [E6d]. A national Community Champions Programme, which will work with 65 local authorities across England to reach out to ethnic minority and disabled communities, will support ‘the sharing of this [Hertfordshire’s] approach and other best practice examples’ [E5].

Social Bubbles: Influence on UK policy and International Practice

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), in a parliamentary briefing paper (7 May 2020) extensively cited R4 findings that a cluster of a few repeated contacts (bubble) was the most effective strategy for keeping infection risk low [E7]. On 13 June 2020, the UK government changed its guidance to allow people living alone to form a ‘support bubble’ with one other household [E8].

The evidence provided to support social bubbles presented in R4 was widely picked up by the worldwide media, including outlets such as the BBC, CNN and Euronews [E10b]. This wide dissemination of the research led to enquiries around the world from organisations regarding social bubble implementation. For example, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Controls recommended employment of bubbles in their guidance on infection prevention and control of COVID-19 in migrant and refugee reception and detention centres [E9a]. In the US, Sullivan County School District, Pennsylvania, implemented a ‘cohorting’ protocol to minimise the risk of widespread contagion, a policy, according to one of their pandemic co-ordination team, ‘based on the article [Block] published in Nature Human Behavior’ [E9b].

Filling the Information Void: Informing the Public

R1-6 all received substantial media attention around the world and helped frame social discourse and public debate on matters concerning disease mitigation measures, demographic spread of the virus and likely hotspots of virus impact. Professor Mills was interviewed on a substantial variety of TV and radio channels, including the BBC World, CNN, Sky News, and multiple foreign national outlets regarding the findings in R2 [E10a]. LCDS’s initial study on the demographics of COVID-19 mortality rates in Italy and England and Wales [R6] garnered attention from policy-makers and the media. Newspapers across the world covered the results of the study, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, News18 India, Il Post, The Sydney Morning Herald and National Geographic España and The Economist [E10c]. The research R1-6 has also been widely disseminated through the Dear Pandemic initiative, run by a group of female academics, of which Dowd is a co-founder. Through mainstream and social media outlets this group engages in public health outreach, and its Facebook page alone had over 60,000 followers at the end of 2020 with posts between 9 August and 15 September 2020 reaching a total audience of 1,022,226.

Ongoing Impact

At the time of writing (early 2021), the LCDS research [R1-6] has been in the public sphere under a year and the above represents only the beginning of its impact, and as at the end of 2020 various impact pathways were in train. The LCDS team is working with NHSx to adapt and develop its online Corona Hotspots Dashboard [R4] to predict health and deprivation hotspots to allow the NHS and local authorities to manage resources at a local level. A Dutch version of the Corona Hotspots Dashboard using added microdata from Statistics Netherlands (CBS = Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) has already been developed as an app in partnership with the Amsterdam Health & Technology Institute [E11].

The academic research of Professor Heath and his team contributed to government policy-making on social integration and was instrumental to shaping the Integrated Communities Action Plan announced February 2019.

Influencing Government Policy: The Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper (2018)

The 2018 Integrated Strategies Green Paper and its subsequent consultation, which was underpinned by the Casey Review, All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report and the British Academy publications, all drew heavily on Heath’s research and fed into the government’s Integrated Communities Action Plan.

Based on Heath’s body of work on Social Inequality and Integration [R1-6], Professor Heath and his doctoral student, Magda Borkowska, were commissioned in early 2016 to draft a report for DCLG (now MHCLG) entitled ‘Integration Gaps and their Socio-Economic Consequences’ [C1]. This report reviewed existing academic and government research, including Heath’s own research, and was particularly important for highlighting the different nature of the integration gaps faced by different ethnic and gender groups (especially the different but severe problems faced by Muslim women and by young black men **[R3]**). The report was circulated within DCLG and Heath also had meetings to discuss the research with the DCLG team and the responsible Minister (Lord Bourne). The report, together with Heath’s personal input, according to the Director for Analysis and Data within the MHCLG, ‘helped policy and analyst teams working on the Government’s Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper [2018, C3] , the subsequent Action Plan and the Community Strategy paper [C8] … His analysis also supported Dame Louise Casey’s review [C4] of integration and opportunity in Britain’ [C2].

The written and oral evidence Heath and his team submitted to the Casey review, an independent review on integration, was highlighted in its subsequent report [2016, C4, pp.55-6, 99; R4-6], particularly his insights into the variations in socio-economic integration between different ethnic and faith groups, and by age and gender, and these themes were picked up in the subsequent Green Paper [C3].

In August 2017 the APPG for Social Integration published a report, entitled ‘Integration not Demonisation’, which concluded the cross-party group’s inquiry into the integration of immigrants. Professor Heath and Lindsay Richards provided both written and oral evidence to the APPG in October 2016 and their research on diversity and integration [R5-6] was discussed in both the APPG interim and final reports [C5]. Recommendations made in the reports reflected CSI research findings, particularly regarding the importance of economically empowering immigrants [R1, R2; C5, p.45]. Consequently, the report encouraged the government to ‘ examine how well existing mainstream employment and skills provision serves the needs of different immigrant communities’ and suggested that employers be incentivised to promote integration in the workplace [C5a, p.9]. It was also recommended that a ‘ new national immigrant integration strategy should differentiate between, and include, policies shaped to reflect the needs and circumstances of different categories of immigrants’ [R2, R3, R5; C5a, pp.10-11]. Lastly, Heath’s emphasis on the importance of language fluency [R1, R2; C5a, p.10] fed into the report’s call for compulsory English classes as ‘ language can be the greatest barrier to accessing all levels of society, including the job market and contact with local community groups, citing that as many as 800,000 immigrants have poor or no proficiency of English language’ [C5a, p.65].

Sajid Javid MP, the then Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, confirmed in Parliament that the APPG’s report had ‘ helped me and my team in the development of the (social integration) strategy’ laid out in the Green Paper on social integration which, as Chuka Umunna observed during a House of Commons debate, ‘ incorporates many of the recommendations of the APPG report’ [C6].

The Greater London Authority’s 2018 strategy for social integration document, entitled ‘All of Us’ [C7] drew heavily on the APPG report. In applying the APPG’s recommendations to specific projects, plans were made for the funding of a range of initiatives which directly relate to some of the key themes emphasised by Heath’s research, including:

• The launch of an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Plus programme, which has resulted in over GBP200,000 allotted to fund pilot projects in and around the City of London which seek to overcome barriers to Londoners learning English [R1, R2; C7, p.64].

• The Workforce Integration Network (WIN – launched May 2018) aimed at improving pathways into employment for under-represented groups, especially young black men [C7, pp.50-1]. Across 2018-19/2019-2020 WIN was allocated a total budget of GBP330,000, and has an approved budget of GBP380,000 for 2020/21. From its inception until 17 September 2020 over 100 businesses have engaged with the programme on the issue of under-representation of young black men in the workplace, and over 1,000 under-represented young people have engaged with the programme [R4; C8].

• Recommendations regarding the effective use of anti-discrimination legislation in the final APPG report, which were built on Heath’s research [R6, C5b p.45], were reflected in the establishment of an Online Hate Crime Hub, aimed at improving the investigative response to hate crime. Between its launch in March 2017 and November 2019 it dealt with over 1,600 cases [R4, C9].

The British Academy undertook a study of social integration and invited Professor Heath to be the academic lead. This work involved both local and national stakeholders, including the MHCLG [C2] and resulted in two main publications: an essay collection by academics and practitioners [C10] and a collection of case studies on ‘The integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers’, which had examples of successful locally-based initiatives [C10a]. Heath launched these publications in December 2017 on behalf of the Academy at Westminster, alongside Chuka Umunna MP (the chair of the APPG) and Lord Bourne. The reports received widespread media coverage and were extensively quoted in the government’s Integrated Communities Strategy Green paper, stating: ‘ We welcome the British Academy’s recent publication of a collection of case studies and examples of successful local integration initiatives, and we have highlighted some further examples in this strategy’ [C3, p.12]. MHCLG’s Director for Analysis and Data further added that ‘ …this report has informed discussions with local authority areas developing tailored responses to specific social integration challenges’ [C2].

Policy Implementation - The Integrated Communities Action Plan (February 2019)

The 2018 Integrated Strategies Green Paper established the government’s vision for integrated communities, and the subsequent action plan outlined the plan for its implementation. Published by the MHCLG, the Action Plan outlined 70 actions, backed by GBP50,000,000 from the MHCLG for a range of initiatives across the UK to improve integration [C11]. These actions include increasing access to English language learning, strengthening local leadership and providing better support and information to people who are new to the UK. One of the main themes of the Action Plan is that integration is a two-way street – ‘ local residents share a responsibility to welcome newcomers to their communities, including migrants, and provide the environment and opportunities for them to take part in community life that will enable effective integration’ [C11, p.9], thus reflecting a key tenet of Heath’s research [R5].

Local Impact – Integrated Communities

The Action Plan also made provision for a GBP3,000,000 Integrated Communities Innovation Fund which has funded 16 projects across the country, ‘from a ‘community gardening project in south-west London that helps new migrants to practice their English language skills while learning how to cultivate land, to table tennis clubs to be run across 3 housing estates in Brighton **[C13]**’. Delivered in partnership with Sport England, the fund was envisioned to engage 70,000 people with activities in schools, community and leisure centres.

Local integration plans are being rolled out in five pilot areas, identified in the Integrated Communities Green Paper [C3] - Blackburn with Darwen, Bradford, Peterborough [C12], Walsall and Waltham Forest. Walsall implemented the ‘Walsall for All’ programme, funding a number of initiatives, such as the ‘Black Country Impact Project’, designed to address high levels of youth unemployment, especially those at risk of social exclusion or from marginalised communities [C12a]. Blackburn with Darwen’s ‘Our Community, Our Future’ programme has a number of projects underway, including a Youth Ambassador’s programme, ‘to equip young people with the skills they need to become leaders in their local communities’, and Community Voices and Youth Voices events to give people ‘across the borough an opportunity to take part in discussions that will help break down any barriers between people from diverse backgrounds’ [C12b]. In 2019, Peterborough created a GBP300,000 Communities Fund; a total of 24 awards (from 128 applications) were made to local initiatives aimed at bringing together communities. Projects supported included an eight month basketball programme for 6-9 year olds with mixed abilities, a community garden to grow food for the local community of Dogsthorpe and provide community space for the public and local groups, and the Gladstone Bilingual Community project – a community café and club designed to bring multilingual communities together [C12c].

‘Professor Heath’s work on social integration has been important in looking at connections across different policy areas, such as English Language training, employment, social mixing and civic engagement. This has helped build and structure the evidence base which has gone on to inform policy decisions over the years on social integration.’ Director for Analysis and Data, MHCLG [C2].

Policy makers around the world are grappling with how to manage the challenges presented by the growing digitalization of labour markets and the economy more generally. As part of the European Digital Market Strategy [E1a], formally announced in February 2020, the European Commission (EC) has been engaged in upgrading the rules governing digital services in the European Union (EU), culminating in the Digital Services Act Package [E1b]. Lehdonvirta’s research has contributed to this process through a number of routes, outlined below.

Informing EU regulatory agenda on digital platforms: Platform-to-Business (P2B) trading practices regulation

Throughout 2017 and 2018, civil servants at the EC’s Directorates-General Communications Networks, Content and Technology’s (CNECT) E-Commerce and Online Platforms unit held a series of meetings with Lehdonvirta while preparing the proposal text for new EU rules aimed at promoting fairness and transparency for business users of online intermediation services, widely known as the online Platform to Business (P2B) regulation [E2a]. Lehdonvirta’s research [R3, R4] highlighted the need to address the power imbalance between platforms and businesses/workers, including issues such as algorithmic control, reputation data lock-in, and the withholding of client data from workers. The final regulation, which became European law in July 2019, contains several provisions on these issues. Article 5 (“Ranking”) deals with opaque algorithms by requiring platforms to ‘set out in their terms and conditions the main parameters determining ranking and the reasons for the relative importance of those main parameters as opposed to other parameters’ [E2b §5]. Article 9 (“Access to data”) aims to solve the problem identified in R4 regarding the withholding of data, and requires platforms to ‘include in their terms and conditions a description of the technical and contractual access, or absence thereof, of business users to any data on themselves and on buyers’ [E2b §9]. Lastly, the need for more transparency in platform companies’ activities to enable statistics production identified in R5 is reflected in the regulation which requires platforms to publish statistics such as the ‘ total number of complaints lodged, the main types of complaints, the average time period needed to process the complaints and aggregated information regarding the outcome of the complaints’ [E2b §11].

The new P2B came into force in July 2020 and required practical practice changes by online platforms [E2c]. Henceforth, they are obliged to make their standard terms and conditions more transparent; and it is also compulsory for such platforms to inform businesses how they treat and rank goods or services offered by themselves or by businesses they control compared to third party businesses; and businesses should be informed how platforms can influence their ranking position. A review and update of the regulation is expected in the next few years, to which Lehdonvirta is formally contributing through his appointment to the related expert group, detailed below.

Along with the new EU P2B regulations, the Commission created the Observatory on the Online Platform Economy to ‘ monitor the platform economy’s evolution in order for policy-making to be more information-based and targeted’, composed of a group of experts in the field of the online economy and a dedicated team of Commission officials [E3a, p.2]. Lehdonvirta was appointed to the expert group which had its first meeting in September 2018 [E3b]. At this meeting, they concluded that one of the activities required to meet its goal was to identify ‘ suitable quantitative measures or indicators on the platform economy’ [E3c, p.5]. To this end, Lehdonvirta proposed the establishment of, and was appointed to chair, a subgroup on ‘Measurement and economic indicators’.

In summer 2019, this subgroup issued a report with recommendations for the monitoring and measurement of the platform economy to allow effective regulation, citing Lehdonvirta’s research among other sources [R4, E3c, p.34]. This report was one of three preliminary reports produced by the expert group designed to feed into the European Commission’s work priorities in the digital area as outlined in its data strategy, and ‘will provide evidence for the upcoming initiative on the ex-ante regulation of platforms with significant network effects as part of the Digital Services Act Package’ [E3c].

Access to social protection and collective representation for platform workers

In 2018 Lehdonvirta was also appointed to the EC’s High-Level Expert Group on the Impact of the Digital Transformation on EU Labour Markets, a role he was selected for, according to the Head of Unit, Digital Economy and Skills within the Directorate General CNET, ‘in recognition of his academic expertise and his demonstrated ability to turn his research into concrete recommendations for policy-makers’ [E4]. The 10-member group published its final report in April 2019 [E5] [R1-2, R4-5]. Of the nine policy recommendations contained in the report, Lehdonvirta led the drafting of four: equalizing the administrative treatment of standard and non-standard work arrangements; reinvigorating social dialogue, including by ensuring that platform workers are not denied the right to collective representation [R1-3, R4]; creating social protection which is neutral with regards to the form and technology of employment; and creating a “Digital Single Window” for employment contributions and taxes [R6].

The recommendation to ensure platform workers’ right to collective representation arises from the status of many of them as self-employed. Self-employed workers are considered by EU competition law not to be employees but businesses, and therefore collective bargaining by such workers may be prevented by the EU competition rules [R4]. Following the expert group report, in June 2020 the European Commission launched a process to address the issue of collective bargaining for the self-employed which involved a public consultation and close engagement with trade unions and employers’ organisations. The aim, according to Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy, was ‘to ensure that those who need to can participate in collective bargaining without the fear of breaking EU competition rules’ [E6] .

The recommendation to create a Digital Single Window - that is, a Union-wide system of receiving earnings data from platform companies for the purposes of taxation and social protection - resulted in a request by the Commission to Lehdonvirta to ‘develop a conceptual paper’ [E7]. The resulting study [R6], according to a spokesperson for the EC Directorate General for Employment and Social Affairs, ‘ has been positively received by various services of the Commission. In fact, a new initiative on tax compliance and fight against tax fraud builds on some of the concepts developed by Professor Lehdonvirta and his colleagues’ [E7]. This initiative, outlined in an Action Plan consultation published in February 2020 and aimed at making taxation simpler and thereby cutting fraud opportunities, includes elements of the Digital Single Window, such as the provision of tax data from digital platforms direct to tax authorities [E8a]. This new Tax Package was adopted by the European Commission on 15 Jul 2020 [E8b]. ‘ This’, the spokesperson concluded , ‘is an excellent example of how research supports policymaking and joint work with academia leads to improved public policy’ [E7]