Promises and Pitfalls of Social Media Data Donations

Irene I. van Driel; Anastasia Giachanou; J. Loes Pouwels; Laura Boeschoten; Ine Beyens; Patti M. Valkenburg

doi:10.1080/19312458.2022.2109608

Promises and Pitfalls of Social Media Data Donations

Irene I. van Driel^*, Anastasia Giachanou, J. Loes Pouwels, Laura Boeschoten, Ine Beyens, Patti M. Valkenburg

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Studies assessing the effects of social media use are largely based on measures of time spent on social media. In recent years, scholars increasingly ask for more insights in social media activities and content people engage with. Data Download Packages (DDPs), the archives of social media platforms that each European user has the right to download, provide a new and promising method to collect timestamped and content-based information about social media use. In this paper, we first detail the experiences and insights of a data collection of 110 Instagram DDPs gathered from 102 adolescents. We successively discuss the challenges and opportunities of collecting and analyzing DDPs to help future researchers in their consideration of whether and how to use DDPs. DDPs provide tremendous opportunities to get insight in the frequency, range, and content of social media activities, from browsing to searching and posting. Yet, collecting, processing, and analyzing DDPs is also complex and laborious, and demands numerous procedural and analytical choices and decisions.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	266-282
Number of pages	17
Journal	Communication Methods and Measures
Volume	16
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2022.2109608
Publication status	Published - 12 Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was funded by an NWO Spinoza Prize and a Gravitation grant (NWO Grant 024.001.003; Consortium on Individual Development) awarded to Patti Valkenburg by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). We would like to thank Tim Verbeij, Teun Siebers, and Wieneke Rollman for their contribution to the data collection and/or coding of this study.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Funding

This study was funded by an NWO Spinoza Prize and a Gravitation grant (NWO Grant 024.001.003; Consortium on Individual Development) awarded to Patti Valkenburg by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). We would like to thank Tim Verbeij, Teun Siebers, and Wieneke Rollman for their contribution to the data collection and/or coding of this study.

Keywords

Facebook use
Time

Access to Document

10.1080/19312458.2022.2109608Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Promises and Pitfalls of Social Media Data Donations (1)Final published version, 3.28 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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Promises and Pitfalls of Social Media Data Donations

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Keywords

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