Hi there! I am Denis Utochkin, a PhD candidate based in Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). I am conducting a consumer research study which involves collecting and analysing a lot of online user-generated content. Below you will find information on what the project is about, what kind of data are being collected, how they are being handled, and how you can ensure we use the content you posted online only in ways you are comfortable with (or not at all).
The goal of this research project is to enhance our understanding of how communication is structured within and across brand-centric online consumer communities and how and to what extent technologies, particularly Web 2.0 and content-filtering algorithms, can facilitate fruitful interaction or, conversely, lead to negative effects such as "filter bubbles".
We ****believe that insights gained during the work on this project will be valuable not only for businesses, but also for society at large, and hope that our findings will contribute, in some small way, to our collective search for a path towards a less segregated and polarised society and a more transparent and harmonious integration of technology into our lives.
Textual and visual data are currently being collected from Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Kickstarter. Please note that this list is liable to (infrequent) change. This page will be updated if a social media platform is added to or discarded from the list.
Only publicly available data will be collected.
Given the purpose (to investigate how consumers build their relationships with brands and other consumers online) and the context (discussions and other user-generated content related to brands in the video games industry) of the project, sensitive information such as mentions of medical conditions (even if publicly available), personal names, or geolocational data are of no interest to the research team and will not be analysed.
Due to the sheer amount of data and the fact that some data are going to be collected in real time via Streaming APIs, it is unfortunately unfeasible to ask for consent from each individual user before collecting the data. Please be aware, however, that the data are treated responsibly and you can always request that any data collected on you are erased.
Data are stored securely at the university's servers. Only the project responsible has full access to the data. Data will be deleted upon project completion (current estimate — August 2022).
Please note that the vast majority of the data will only ever be used for aggregated automated analysis whose output will make identifying individuals impossible. No information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (direct quotes from postings, images etc.) will be published without first acquiring explicit consent from the data subject.
Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) has carried out a data protection impact assessment of this project and concluded that personal data are sufficiently safeguarded and procedures for the processing of personal data are in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation. NSD's conclusion is supported by the Data Protection officer at NHH.
If you want to check whether any data were collected on you and/or request that any such data are deleted, reach out to me and I will exclude any and all posts/comments/tweets etc. made by you from the dataset.
Contact info of the project responsible (Denis Utochkin, PhD Research Scholar at Norwegian School of Economics):
Contact info of the supervisor of the project responsible (Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe, Professor at Norwegian School of Economics):