The jury, consisting of Jacobine van den Brink, Svetlana Yakovleva and Göran Sluiter could choose from 8 entries this year. The selection was based on the criteria of scientific originality and contribution, thoroughness and transnationality.

The Soap Box as a Black Box

Paddy Leerssen was chosen as the winner with his article The Soap Box as a Black Box: Regulating Transparency in Social Media Recommender Systems, published in European Journal of Law & Technology (Vol. 11, no. 2, 2020). The paper maps and critiques the various efforts at regulating social media, recommendation transparency in Europe, and the types of accountability they pursue.

The jury says the following: 'The article takes a comprehensive and thorough account of existing approaches to transparency of social media recommender systems, identifies a gap in the research and makes a convincing argument on how to fill that gap. We also greatly appreciated that the paper was accessible: also non-specialists in this area can properly grasp the paper'.