Showcasing AIO research infrastructure at the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons Symposium 2025

The Australian Internet Observatory team presented a comprehensive overview of the program’s research infrastructure development and deployment over the past eighteen months at the ARDC HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons Symposium 2025. The session addressed key technical, methodological and governance challenges associated with generating digital observability for social research.

For those who missed it, the presentation is now available to watch online, and provides a rare window into the technical and methodological foundations required to support national-scale digital research:

We have spent the last eighteen months pushing forward a bold proposition, that researchers across the humanities and social sciences should have access to reliable and ethically governed observability of the digital platforms shaping public life. The AIO initiative advances scalable and ethics-aligned observability of online platforms through:

• Automated social media data collection pipelines using platform APIs

• Participant-generated data donation workflows and analytics

• Mobile-based data acquisition for ephemeral and sequenced content

• Secure workspace environments for cross-institutional research

• Standardised engagement and onboarding procedures for researchers and participants

At the centre of this narrative is collaboration across institutions, expertise and disciplines. From transformed efforts of RMIT University’s Dr Amanda Lawrence, teams have worked tirelessly to translate research needs into operational digital infrastructure. This required continuous negotiation with platform ecosystems that are always changing and often opaque. Automated data pipelines for social media monitoring, described by the University of Melbourne’s Prof Richard Sinnott, were developed in parallel with governance processes ensuring that novel collection approaches remain aligned with ethical responsibilities.

Meanwhile, at the Queensland University of Technology, Prof Patrik Wikström piloted the AIO’s data donation capability—working closely with participants to understand how personal data archives can be contributed in ways that balance scientific value and personal agency. Behind the scenes, this work has demanded intensive design thinking: how do individuals navigate their own data? How can researchers make donated data intelligible, rather than overwhelming?

From The University of Queensland, Dr Giselle Newton and researcher Lauren Hayden tackled one of the most elusive challenges: observability of targeted advertising and ephemeral content. Their work developing mobile observation apps and tools embodies the AIO ethos—technical ingenuity deployed in the service of understanding hidden digital influence.

Ensuring this infrastructure can be accessed securely and responsibly across institutions has been another major component of the program. Deakin University’s Dr Bogdan Mamaev showcased refined onboarding and governance systems that were not simply designed in isolation, but iterated through real researcher workflows and feedback loops.

Case Study: Data Donation Analytics

A dedicated case study from The University of Queensland’s Lauren Hayden and AIO Principal Software Developer Michael Esteban, demonstrating how the team has transformed complex data download packages into interactive visual environments. This session is available to view here:

This progress was a direct outcome of months of engineering work within the AIO software team—unravelling the structure of personal platform archives and reassembling them into formats that support qualitative interpretation, exploratory analysis and more collaborative research relationships with data donors.

Collectively, these developments show that large-scale digital observability does not emerge from technology alone. It emerges from coordination, trust-building, iterative problem solving, and a shared belief that research must keep pace with the systems that influence public communication.

The AIO continues to evolve as a community-driven and technologically robust platform, powered by teams committed to enabling social research innovation in Australia. For those working to analyse digital environments and the societal impacts of online platforms, the tools and workflows demonstrated at the symposium represent a growing and open invitation to collaborate.

Researchers are encouraged to explore the presentation and engage with the AIO as we expand this national capability.

For Researchers: Get Involved

AIO welcomes collaboration with researchers working on the social impacts of digital platforms, observability methods, and socio-technical data governance. Our tools, workflows and secure access environments are designed to support sophisticated cross-platform analyses at scale. To view more videos from AIO team, visit our YouTube channel.

To explore our capabilities and access documentation, please view our Tools or connect with the AIO team on contact@internetobservatory.org.au.