Hi all, I wanted to let you know about Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data: A Workshop Report <https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-FX-RAtD-workshop-report-final-int.pdf>, a new report that CDT released todaybased on a workshop we held earlier this year with researchers from academia, civil society, and journalism to examine three key questions concerning access to data held by social media companies: (1) What data do researchers want for public interest research; (2) how should researchers be vetted for data access; and (3) what methods should hosts use to provide access to researchers. The report describes key findings based on information from the workshop and makes recommendations to policymakers and social media companies, and others looking to enhance independent researchers’ access to data held by content hosts. The recommendations are: * Policymakers and hosts should help researchers understand what potential data is available. * Hosts should have established processes through which researchers can request access to non-public data or tools to make public data more accessible. * Hosts and policymakers should make accessing and using data for research in the public interest less expensive. * Policymakers should prioritize improving researchers’ access to public data through legislation. * Policymakers should prioritize access to advertising data. * When vetting is necessary, hosts or legislation should evaluate specific research projects and plans based on established, transparent criteria. Hosts that voluntarily provide data or legislation that requires hosts to provide data should not rely simply on whether a researcher falls within a particular category, such as academia. * Policymakers should strictly limit or eliminate the ability of commercial social media monitoring and marketing firms to collect and sell users’ data, even though some researchers rely on commercial sources to access data. You can read a Twitter thread about the report here <https://twitter.com/CenDemTech/status/1559543329444040706?s=20&t=hWWdMFPNoyLHEe3qhLkTHQ>. The executive summary is available here <https://cdt.org/insights/improving-researcher-access-to-digital-data-a-workshop-report/>(and here, in PDF form <https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-08-15-final-Researcher-Access-to-Data-report-exec-summ-FX.pdf>). In the coming weeks, CDT also plans to release another research report that examines other industries where companies share data through different mechanisms with researchers while also addressing concerns around privacy. That report will present lessons that social media companies can learn for sharing data with researchers. We’ll share it with you when it’s released as well. We hope Improving Researcher Access to Digital Data is useful to your work. If you have any questions or want to discuss more, please feel free to reach out. Regards, Dhanaraj -- *Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>* *E:* dthakur@cdt.org | *P:* +1 202 407 8849 | @thakurdhanaraj