'I See Something You Don't See'. A Computational Analysis of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act

In its latest proposals, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital ServicesAct (DSA), the European Commission puts forward several new obligations foronline intermediaries, especially large online platforms and “gatekeepers.” Bothare expected to serve as a blueprint for regulation in the United States, wherelawmakers have also been investigating competition on digital platforms and newantitrust laws passed the House Judiciary Committee as of June 11, 2021. This Articleinvestigates whether all stakeholder groups share the same understanding and useof the relevant terms and concepts of the DSA and DMA. Leveraging the power ofcomputational text analysis, we find significant differences in the employment ofterms like “gatekeepers,” “self-preferencing,” “collusion,” and others in the positionpapers of the consultation process that informed the drafting of the two latestCommission proposals. Added to that, sentiment analysis shows that in some casesthese differences also come with dissimilar attitudes. While this may not besurprising for new concepts such as gatekeepers or self-preferencing, the same isnot true for other terms, like “self-regulatory,” which not only is used differently bystakeholders but is also viewed more favorably by medium and big companies andorganizations than by small ones. We conclude by sketching out how differentcomputational text analysis tools, could be combined to provide many helpfulinsights for both rulemakers and legal scholars