The federal and state governments will fund a new research infrastructure for digital behavioral data at GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences from Jan. 1, 2022. The aim is to create services for research with digital behavioral data.
Social media, smartphones, networked devices and the Internet dominate our everyday working lives and have also become an integral part of our private lives. They are changing the way we meet friends and partners, organize our leisure time, inform ourselves politically and participate in society overall. The increasing digitization of all areas of life is also reflected in research on social issues: digital behavioral data offer the opportunity to research new questions as well as to address established questions with new approaches.
GESIS recognized the potential of digital behavioral data for social science research early on and will tap into this potential as part of a strategic expansion. A corresponding application convinced both the Leibniz Association and the German Council of Science and Humanities, which rated the project as "very good" and attested it a "unique selling point throughout Europe". As of January 1, 2022, the federal and state governments will fund the project as a special strategic item and thus make an important contribution to enabling research on and with digital behavioral data on a solid infrastructural basis.