All new AIO Platform is now available
Hear from Julian Thomas, Director of AIO:
We build innovative data collection and analysis tools, methods and workflows for research on digital cultures and societies in the public interest.
The Digital Transformation Challenge
Digital platforms play a critical role in Australia’s economy and society, yet researcher access to data and the capacity to observe activities on digital platforms, apps and sensors is still limited.
The next decade will see a new wave of digital transformation and many challenges in the way data, communication and digital platforms operate. Large-scale online data has the potential to substantially contribute to the capacity of business, government and the community to understand and address Australia’s major social, economic and public policy challenges.
The Australian Internet Observatory is developing the tools and capabilities required to gather and analyse online user experience data, algorithms, and interactions. It supports innovative approaches to the collection and analysis of digital social data and internet platforms and the analytical tools and governance required to support cutting-edge research on social, economic, health and environmental issues.
What we want to achieve.
Digital Research Platform
Manage your project from end-to-end including participant recruitment and data analysis.
Data Collection Tools
An integrated suite of data collection tools, including data download packages (DDPs), mobile streaming capture, browser extensions and APIs.
Data Governance and Management
Ethical and legal frameworks and guides for working with digital research methods and social data, including guidance for Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) applications.
Outreach and Training
Supporting research training and engagement through workshops, events, training and online resources.
AIO Resources for Researchers
The tools that power digital observation.
The AIO is developing frameworks to improve access to digital platform data without the need for deep technical knowledge and computational skills.
Our current toolkit features new methods that can be integrated into qualitative and quantitative research designs, making research more rigorous and data-driven.
Work with us
Whether you are a qualitative researcher exploring digital data for the first time or a computational social scientist looking for more data, we are here to support you from your initial idea to final analysis.
Participate
By sharing your data and participating in our research, you can help Australian researchers study these platforms. Your contribution helps us better understand how algorithms work, which kinds of advertisements target Australians, and how social media affects our society. The benefits of data donation extend to both researchers and participants. By participating in data donation research, you can also learn more about your digital footprint.
Learn more about the AIO
Information about the Australian Internet Observatory and the people behind it.
The AIO is a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons (DOI: 10.3565/hjrp-b141). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
