Data Download Packages (DDPs)
This method allows researchers to collect data directly from their respondents’ social media accounts. Driven by data portability laws, such as Europe's GDPR, major platforms are required to provide users with a complete archive of their personal information upon request. This platform data can then be reused in research, provided that specific ethical requirements are satisfied.
DDPs are a treasure trove of granular information, offering more opportunities than any other kind of social media data access. The AIO is building a secure, ethics-first framework and dashboards to help researchers work with this innovative and rich data source.
What's Inside a Data Download Package?
While each platform's package is different, they typically contain a vast array of information that provides a deep view of a user's social media activities and interactions. This can include:
Account & Profile Information: Usernames, contact info, login history, and profile changes over time.
Content & Activity: A full history of posts, photos, and videos uploaded, along with comments, likes, and shares.
Connections & Interactions: Friend lists, followers, group memberships, and a history of interactions with other users and pages.
Messages: Archives of conversations on platforms like Messenger or Instagram Direct.
Advertising Data: A log of the ad topics the platform thinks you're interested in, and sometimes a history of ads your respondent interacted with.
Search & Activity Logs: Records of searches performed, videos watched, and links clicked within the platform.
Depending on the platform, this can extend to location history, app usage, and other metadata.
What the DDP Donation Framework Looks Like
Collecting DDPs is a participant-led process built on a foundation of transparency and control to eliminate unintended consequences and ensure the best controlled result possible.
Study Design and Ethics Approval: A researcher designs their study, obtains full ethics approval, and recruits their consented participants.
Participant Data Request: The participant, guided by the researcher, navigates to the relevant platform's settings and formally requests to download their data archive. The platform then prepares this file and sends a download link to the participant, usually within a few hours or days.
Secure Upload to the AIO Dashboard: The participant logs into the AIO’s data donation dashboard and uploads their downloaded ZIP file into the system.
Data Curation: The AIO system unpacks the file and presents its contents to the participant in a clear, easy-to-understand interface. They can see every category of data available (e.g., "Videos you watched," "Comments you made," "Your ad interests").
Informed Consent and Donation: The participant reviews the data and uses checkboxes to select the categories they are comfortable donating to the researcher. They have the power to exclude sensitive information, while still contributing valuable data. Once they confirm, only the selected data is transferred to the secure research environment, where the researcher further interacts with the data.
What are DDPs good for?
DDPs allow researchers to create rich, detailed datasets and serve as a great alternative to APIs and manual data collection. They capture data that is not otherwise available to researchers and is tied to users’ behaviours, interests, and network connections that have evolved over many years. Combining data with robust theoretical frameworks, screen tracking, interviews, experiments, or other broader datasets allows for more detailed analysis and potentially stronger publications. It enables the exploration of biases and intervening variables that are often omitted and not discussed when working with social media data.
It is a new methodology that has been actively employed by the Australian Ad Observatory project, with more examples of research found here. If you are planning a study that could benefit from DDPs or would like to learn more about the method, please contact us. We will work with you to integrate this powerful and ethical methodology into your research design.