Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data: A Workshop Report | Center for Democracy and Technology

In March 2022, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) convened 29 researchers from academia, civil society, and journalism in a workshop. The workshop was designed to explore specific questions around researchers’ access to data held by social media companies and other hosts of user-generated content. Participants discussed three key questions concerning access to data held by content hosts:

1. What data held by content hosts do researchers believe is valuable and useful to research in the public interest?
2. Who should be given access to this data, and how should researchers be vetted to gain access?
3. How should researchers be given access to this data, i.e., what methods should hosts use to provide access to researchers?

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