The new AIO Platform helps researchers at Australian universities create and manage projects investigating any digital platform or service relevant to their research, including TikTok, Instagram, ChatGPT, Netflix, Facebook and Spotify.
Australian researchers now have a new way to study the digital platforms shaping everyday life with the launch of the AIO Platform, a national self-service research infrastructure developed by the Australian Internet Observatory. The platform launches during heightened public and policy interest in the effects of digital services in Australia, as the Federal Government considers adopting a Digital Duty of Care framework.
Current concerns around harms related to social media, online gambling, scams, and the mainstream adoption of artificial intelligence add urgency to broader questions about how people use and experience digital platforms.
Designed for humanities and social sciences researchers, including those without advanced programming skills, the platform initially supports data donation research using Data Download Packages (DDPs).
DDPs are personal data archives which can be requested from social media, streaming and other digital services. They may include viewing and listening histories, searches, interactions, advertising information, account settings and other records of an individual’s experience.
With informed consent, researchers can use relevant records to investigate questions that surveys, interviews, platform APIs and publicly visible content cannot fully answer. Projects involving human participants or donated personal data still require institutional ethics approval before data collection begins, in line with AIO’s ethics-first approach.
RMIT Distinguished Professor and AIO Director Julian Thomas said the platform would remove a significant practical barrier facing Australian researchers.“Researchers often need to build their own technical systems before they can begin answering the questions they are interested in,” he said. “That can be expensive, time-consuming and out of reach for smaller teams or researchers without specialist technical expertise. The AIO Platform provides shared national infrastructure so researchers can focus on designing rigorous and ethical studies rather than building the underlying technology from scratch.”
Jenny Fewster, Director, HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons, Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) said, “Making the AIO Platform available to researchers nationally makes research on digital platforms and social media algorithms easier and faster for researchers so that they can deepen our understanding of the impact of online interactions on all Australians.
The University of Queensland and AIO Deputy Director Professor Nicholas Carah said the platform would also support research into rapidly developing public policy questions. “Australia’s social media minimum-age restrictions have created an urgent need for independent evidence about how platform use and people’s experiences are changing,” he said.
“The AIO Platform will support research into these broader questions and more—from recommendation systems and advertising to the cultural, health, educational and social impacts of digital services—using rigorous methods and appropriate consent, privacy and ethics safeguards.”
Accessing the AIO Platform
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- create and register a research project
- configure data donation activities
- use supported Data Download Package tools
- manage research participants and donated data
- collaborate with approved members of their research team
- access AIO guidance, resources and training.
Potential research areas include:
- How recommendation systems shape what Australians watch, read and listen to.
- How people encounter advertising and sponsored content.
- How experiences of platforms differ across communities.
- How digital services influence culture, health, education and public debate.
- How people understand and manage their own digital footprints.
National infrastructure for a rapidly changing research field
Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, ChatGPT, and Facebook, among many others, use personalised systems to determine what individual users see, hear and encounter. These personalised experiences can be difficult to examine from outside the platform. The AIO Platform uses access controls and secure Australian-hosted infrastructure to manage donated research data. Approved projects must follow applicable research ethics, privacy, consent and data-management requirements.
The AIO brings together expertise in social science, digital media, data science, software development, research ethics and data governance to support public-interest research into digital platforms and emerging technologies. The launch of the AIO Platform turns that expertise into shared infrastructure available to researchers around Australia.
“Data donation can show researchers much more than how an algorithm works,” said Queensland University of Technology Partner Lead Professor Daniel Angus.
“At scale, it can reveal patterns in how people use digital platforms and how these systems shape individual and collective experiences. But access must remain specific and consent-based: participants must know what information is being sought, how it will be used and protected, and researchers must collect only what the approved study requires.”
Introducing the AIO Platform for Digital Platform Research
ARDC is offering a webinar for all interested researchers tomorrow at 1pm AEST to check out the demo of the AIO Platform and how it can be used in your digital research. Please register for the webinar below.
