Datenzugang zu Social-Media-Plattformen für die Forschung: Lehren aus bisherigen Maßnahmen und Empfehlungen zur Stärkung von Initiativen inner- und außerhalb der EU

The report examines the challenges and opportunities for researchers accessing social media data, focusing on the tension between data privacy and the public interest. It analyzes current tools like APIs and transparency reports, evaluates the impact of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), and proposes the creation of an independent intermediary body to manage researcher accreditation and data access across liberal-democratic states.

• Researchers face significant technological and legal barriers to data access, including the use of end-to-end encryption, the rise of blockchain-based platforms like Odysee that lack APIs, and the fragmentation of data across different platform services.
• The report identifies three primary categories of platform data: user-generated data (activities and interactions), platform curation data (moderation and ranking information), and platform decision-making data (internal processes and architecture experiments).
• Current transparency reporting is often insufficient because platforms use arbitrary or opaque categories that can hide valuable insights, such as YouTube grouping 'spam' and 'misleading content' together.
• The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) introduces mandatory transparency reporting and requires Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) to provide vetted researchers with real-time access to public data to help identify systemic risks.
• The Social Science One project demonstrated that relying on voluntary industry partnerships can lead to reduced datasets and statistical uncertainty, particularly when platforms apply Differential Privacy to protect user anonymity.
• Crowdsourcing and data donations via browser extensions provide a viable alternative to APIs for studying algorithms, as seen in Mozilla's studies on YouTube, though they are resource-intensive and subject to selection bias.
• The report recommends the establishment of an independent intermediary body to certify researcher qualifications, review project proposals, and manage data access to avoid conflicts of interest and reduce the burden on smaller institutions.
• To ensure international harmonization, the report suggests adopting the EU's GDPR standards—specifically exceptions for scientific research and public interest archiving—as a global benchmark for data protection.

APA

Bundtzen, S., & Schwieter, C. (2023). Datenzugang zu Social-Media-Plattformen für die Forschung: Lehren aus bisherigen Maßnahmen und Empfehlungen zur Stärkung von Initiativen inner- und außerhalb der EU. Institute for Strategic Dialogue. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Datenzugang-zu-Social-Media-Plattformen-fur-die-Forschung-1.pdf

Chicago

Bundtzen, Sara, and Christian Schwieter. Datenzugang zu Social-Media-Plattformen für die Forschung: Lehren aus bisherigen Maßnahmen und Empfehlungen zur Stärkung von Initiativen inner- und außerhalb der EU. Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2023. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Datenzugang-zu-Social-Media-Plattformen-fur-die-Forschung-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bundtzen |first1=Sara |last2=Schwieter |first2=Christian |title=Datenzugang zu Social-Media-Plattformen für die Forschung: Lehren aus bisherigen Maßnahmen und Empfehlungen zur Stärkung von Initiativen inner- und außerhalb der EU |publisher=Institute for Strategic Dialogue |date=2023 |url=https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Datenzugang-zu-Social-Media-Plattformen-fur-die-Forschung-1.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bundtzen2023datenzugang, author = {Bundtzen, Sara and Schwieter, Christian}, title = {{Datenzugang zu Social-Media-Plattformen für die Forschung: Lehren aus bisherigen Maßnahmen und Empfehlungen zur Stärkung von Initiativen inner- und außerhalb der EU}}, institution = {Institute for Strategic Dialogue}, year = {2023}, url = {https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Datenzugang-zu-Social-Media-Plattformen-fur-die-Forschung-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }