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Illuminate the darkness with your social media data

We are researching how people interact in the digital space and what those interactions mean for human well-being.

Universität Bielefeld
What is this about?
Social interactions play a significant role in human well-being. To better understand this relationship, we are developing methods to measure digital social interactions for research.
You can support us by anonymously donating your chat meta-data from WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram.
Why should I participate?
Receive feedback

Receive feedback

You will receive graphs on your messaging behavior, such as in which chats you write the most, when are you the most active, how fast you reply, etc. This study is not intended to be a clinical-psychological diagnosis.
Stay anonymous

Stay anonymous

We will ask you to donate anonymized chat data (number of words for text messages, length in seconds for voice messages, message timestamp and pseudonyms of the chat participants). We will have no access to any names, message texts, voice message content or any other content.
Support research

Support research

The results of this study will contribute to the overall goal of better understanding the effects of social interactions on human well-being.
How do I participate in the study?
This study will be completely anonymous and online. To participate in this study, we will ask you to donate your anonymized messages and complete questionnaires. After downloading the interaction data of a platform of your choice, the study will only last for about 10 minutes.
Can I drop out during the study?
First things first: participation is entirely voluntary. You can drop out at any point during the study. Please note that due to the anonymous nature of the data, we cannot identify and delete your data after participation.
How do I donate my data?
Data request:
Data request: You request your social media data from a platform of your choice (currently supported: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram) and download it to your device.
Anonymization:
Anonymization: We will remove all content from your data and limit it to metadata (e.g. length and timestamp of message). Your name, as well as the names of other participants, will get replaced by random pseudonyms (eg. "James" → "anonymous13"). You may examine the anonymization of your data before uploading it to our servers.
Storage:
Storage: Only anonymized and reduced data will be uploaded to one of our secure servers.
The purpose of this website is to inform you about the background and process of this online study. If any questions or concerns arise during the process, please write to the principal investigator (Prof. Dr. Hanna Drimalla, AG Multimodal Behavior Processing, Technische Fakultät, Universität Bielefeld, drimalla@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de, Tel. +49 521 106-12043)
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