[Air-L] New CDT report: Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data, A Workshop Report

[Dhanaraj Thakur]

Hi all,

I wanted to let you know about Improving Researcher Access to Digital 
Data: A Workshop Report 
<https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-FX-RAtD-workshop-report-final-int.pdf>, 
a new report that CDT released todaybased on a workshop we held earlier 
this year with researchers from academia, civil society, and journalism 
to examine three key questions concerning access to data held by social 
media companies: (1) What data do researchers want for public interest 
research; (2) how should researchers be vetted for data access; and (3) 
what methods should hosts use to provide access to researchers.


The report describes key findings based on information from the workshop 
and makes recommendations to policymakers and social media companies, 
and others looking to enhance independent researchers’ access to data 
held by content hosts. The recommendations are:


  *

    Policymakers and hosts should help researchers understand what
    potential data is available.

  *

    Hosts should have established processes through which researchers
    can request access to non-public data or tools to make public data
    more accessible.

  *

    Hosts and policymakers should make accessing and using data for
    research in the public interest less expensive.

  *

    Policymakers should prioritize improving researchers’ access to
    public data through legislation.

  *

    Policymakers should prioritize access to advertising data.

  *

    When vetting is necessary, hosts or legislation should evaluate
    specific research projects and plans based on established,
    transparent criteria. Hosts that voluntarily provide data or
    legislation that requires hosts to provide data should not rely
    simply on whether a researcher falls within a particular category,
    such as academia.

  *

    Policymakers should strictly limit or eliminate the ability of
    commercial social media monitoring and marketing firms to collect
    and sell users’ data, even though some researchers rely on
    commercial sources to access data.


You can read a Twitter thread about the report here 
<https://twitter.com/CenDemTech/status/1559543329444040706?s=20&t=hWWdMFPNoyLHEe3qhLkTHQ>. 
The executive summary is available here 
<https://cdt.org/insights/improving-researcher-access-to-digital-data-a-workshop-report/>(and 
here, in PDF form 
<https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-final-Researcher-Access-to-Data-report-exec-summ-FX.pdf>).


In the coming weeks, CDT also plans to release another research report 
that examines other industries where companies share data through 
different mechanisms with researchers while also addressing concerns 
around privacy. That report will present lessons that social media 
companies can learn for sharing data with researchers. We’ll share it 
with you when it’s released as well.


We hope Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data is useful to your 
work. If you have any questions or want to discuss more, please feel 
free to reach out.


Regards,

Dhanaraj

-- 

*Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director
Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>*
*E:* dthakur at cdt.org | *P:* +1 202 407 8849 | @thakurdhanaraj