‘Digging into Digital Footprints Data’ is a project led by BDFI academic Dr Jessica Ogden, alongside Prof Susan Halford (co-director of Centre for Sociodigital Futures) and academics from the University of Southampton.

The project has received a share of £2.3million funding from Smart Data Research UK under its accelerator scheme.

Dr Ogden said: “Smart data is an exciting new resource for social researchers, offering valuable insights into human behaviour in real-time and at scale. However, many researchers struggle to access the processes behind how this data is created and collected, which is crucial for understanding its meaning and how to use it effectively and ethically.

“This project aims to change this by collaborating with partners from different sectors to make these processes more transparent.”

The researchers will be focusing on three types of smart data: web archives, social media and synthetic data. In turn, the project will develop ‘data journeys’ and create an open framework to help researchers better understand and utilise these data sources in social research.