Transparency as an empty signifier? Assessing the discursive use of transparency in EU and online platform initiatives on political actors and advertising

Political and societal debates increasingly occur in new public spheres being created by online platforms. While this provides opportunities to reach new audiences, run political campaigns and increase popularity of certain ideas, it also poses threats for the transparency of democratic processes. The public debate is challenged by various risks connected to undesirable practices that are observable on online platforms, such as political disinformation or unequal rules for political advertising, which may interfere with fair elections, raise populistic moods and/or increase societal tension and polarisation. The aim of the paper is to investigate EU policy initiatives to strengthen European democracy (with a focus on increasing transparency) in the context of ongoing political and policy debates on regulating online platforms. How is the concept of “transparency” in the context of democratic processes understood by the EU and key platforms (social media platforms and search engines) and what is the projected responsibility of platforms therein? We compare and confront ongoing EU policy initiatives (the European Democracy Action Plan, revised Code of Practice on Disinformation, Digital Services Act, proposed Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising) with platform policies (community standards) and practices (platform design) undertaken to moderate political actors and advertising. We argue that the concept of transparency is used as an ‘empty signifier’: meaningful at the political and declarative level but when translated into practice, leads to diverse results. After briefly reviewing literature on the digital public sphere, changing political communication strategies, ethics of transparency, the paper conducts a discourse analysis of the concept of “transparency” and the projected platform responsibility in the aforementioned EU policy initiatives, compared against the policies and practices of platforms on political actors and advertising (Meta, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Telegram, Mastodon). The paper thus seeks to contribute to academic and policy debates on platform and algorithmic transparency in light of the upcoming European elections.