Tools and Services
Data donation approaches to digital platform research involve recruiting participants who actively consent to contributing, donating or transfering their personal data or other information to a research project. There are a range of methods and AIO is currently developing tools using 3 different approaches.
AIReD
The AIReD is an interactive web based application designed to provide access to platform data available via APIs. The Dashboard provides tools to perform social media analysis and allows users to interact with topic modelling results and word embeddings that are generated by the ‘live’ machine learning pipelines.
NewsTalk
NewsTalk is an aggregator of reader commentary on the majority of Australian news web sites. It also harvests Reddit threads linking Australian news stories, providing additional coverage of Australian news commentary even when publishers don't support on-site reader comments.
Mobile Streaming Toolkit
The Mobile Streaming Toolkit is able to identify and capture a range of digital content on mobile platforms and apps including images, video and text. Data is then enhanced via OCR, links to other data sources and tagging. Researchers access data through a dashboard for tagging, filtering, analysis and visualisations.
Data Donation Tools
Browser Extensions
The Browser Extension approach offers a way to capture data from websites and platforms via browser plugin software. The system can be designed to collect, store, enrich, and visualise a range of data types.
API-Based Data Collection Tools
APIs (Application Programming Interface) allow software applications to connect to each other and share data and other information. They are widely used in many contexts and rely on the data holder to specify the protocol for what can shared. Access to APIs is limited for many major digital platforms or services. AIO currently has 3 API-based collection tools available for researchers to explore on request (ethics approval may be required).
AusReddit
AusReddit is a collection of posts and comments from Australian-related subreddits. It aims to provide researchers with access to a rich data source that can give rich insights into Australia's societal issues.
Data Download Packages
A Data Download Package (DDP) approach is designed to facilitate the collection, extraction, inspection, and analysis of digital trace data donated by users. The system enables researchers to analyse structured data in a secure environment using a streamlined process.