[Air-L] New CDT report: Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data, A Workshop Report
Dhanaraj Thakur
dthakur at cdt.org
Tue Aug 16 12:58:44 PDT 2022
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
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