Why Philanthropy Is Interested in Facebook’s Social Data

In the midst of Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to Congress and the ongoing headlines about Cambridge Analytica’s exploitation of Facebook data, there is one potential silver lining: the newly-announced “Social Data Initiative” that will be hosted by the Social Science Research Council.
The Social Data Initiative is a partnership between the social media giant, academic researchers, and several large foundations. It promises to radically reshape the state of research on social media, civic engagement, and political participation. (And this is a research area that was desperately in need of an overhaul.) With that promise also comes some associated risk.
The status quo that this Social Data Initiative will be replacing was not great. To gain access to rich Facebook data, scholars had to partner with or be employed by the company itself. That meant that Facebook was driving the research agenda, that Facebook could effectively veto publication of findings that cast the company in a negative light, and that academic review processes like the Institutional Review Board (IRB) could often be skirted or ignored entirely.