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New forms of data

Social scientists are increasingly drawing on new forms of data beyond the traditional genres of surveys and interviews. These data include administrative records, commercial transactions, social media and internet data, geo-spatial data, and image and audio data. These types of new data present challenges for technical infrastructure, legal governance, and ethically responsible research and digital preservation.

Researchers at GESIS are investigating several vital topics in this domain:

  1. linking digital behavioral data (e.g., social media) with survey data
  2. digital preservation of social media data to enable access while protecting privacy
  3. georeferencing surveys to link them to small-scale neighborhood information found in geo-spatial data

Learn more about our consulting and services:

  • Kohne, Julian. 2023. "ChatDashboard - A Framework to collect, link, and process donated WhatsApp Chat Log Data." European Survey Research Association Conference (ESRA), University of Milano - Bicocca, Mailand, 2023-07-18.
  • Génois, Mathieu, Maria Zens, Marcos Oliveira, Clemens Lechner, Johann Schaible, and Markus Strohmaier. 2023. "Combining Sensors and Surveys to Study Social Interactions: A Case of Four Science Conferences." Personality Science 4 1-24. doi: https://doi.org/10.5964/ps.9957.
  • Lietz, Haiko. 2022. "Identifying endogenous time to slice longitudinal network data." XLII Sunbelt International Social Network Conference, Cairns, Australia, 2022-08-30.
  • Génois, Mathieu, Maria Zens, Marcos Oliveira, and Johann Schaible. 2023. "[Poster:] Exploration of contact behaviour during scientific conferences." IC2S2 2023: International Conference on Computational Social Science, 2023-07-17.
  • Batzdorfer, Veronika. 2022. "Conspiracy theories on Twitter: Emerging motifs and temporal dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic." ODISSEI Conference for Social Science in the Netherlands 2022, Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations, Utrecht, 2022-11-03.