Illuminate the darkness with your social media data
We are researching digital methods to better understand social media interaction and its potential impact on mental health in order to help people. Support our mission by donating your social media data anonymously. As a gesture of appreciation for your efforts, we will grant you interesting insights into your data.
What is this about?
Social interaction plays a significant role in our mental health. The Multimodal Behavior Processing Group at the University of Bielefeld is currently developing digital measurement tools in order to better understand it. In this ongoing study we are trying to answer a particular question: Can the social involvement of people be measured by utilizing their social media data?
If you want to participate in this study, you can request your data from a social media platform of your choice (Facebook and WhatsApp). You can then anonymize this data on the website, upload it and donate it to our research platform.
We recommend using a computer for participation.
Why should I participate?
Receive feedback
As a gesture of appreciation for your efforts, you will receive meaningful insights and feedback to your online interaction behaviour and social involvement. We will generate graphical representations of your sent and received messages over the last months. This study is not intended to be a clinical-psychological diagnosis.
Support research
In this study, we are trying to measure the participants' social involvement using their interaction data (exchange of messages via Whatsapp or Facebook). The results of this study will contribute to the overall goal of better understanding the effects of social interaction on mental health.
Stay anonymous
When uploading your data, we will only process and analyze anonymized data (message length, message timestamp and pseudonyms of the conversation participants), not the message content (message text or the name of the participants). We can therefore assure you that we have no access to your actual messages.
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 several questionnaires. After having downloaded the interaction data of a platform of your choice, the study will only last for about 20 minutes.
Can I drop out during the study?
First things first: participation is entirely voluntary. At at time, you may revoke your consent concerning your participation in the study, without giving any reason and without any kind of negative consequences. Before uploading the data to our research platform, you may revoke your consent concerning the storage of your anonymized data, without giving any reason and without any kind of negative consequences.
How do I donate my data?
Data request: You request your social media data from a platform of your choice (currently supported: Facebook and WhatsApp) and download it to your device.
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: 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)
Problem Report and Suggestions
If you encounter a problem while using our application or you have other recommendations and feedback for us, please use the "Report Problem" button at the top right of the page. We are continuously working to improve the application.
Thank you!
