Mid-scale RI-1 (M1:IP): Observatory for Online Human and Platform Behavior

该项目的核心目标是构建一个安全、隐私保护、道德健全、科学有效的在线行为研究观察站。这个观察站捕捉了大量志愿者的在线行为，以及互联网主要平台的算法驱动决策的细节。该观测站提供有关互联网的广泛研究，包括检查信息生态系统的状态，分析各种类型的破坏性在线行为，以及对网络世界多方面的一般研究。该基础设施填补了这一空白，为研究人员提供了高质量的人类和平台行为数据，这些数据的规模和粒度将允许对这一新的、无处不在的现象进行转型调查。该项目(1)收集了大量志愿者的在线行为数据，大约有数万人，他们的同意是经过仔细确定的；(2)记录第三方对这些个人的跟踪；(3)捕获第三方对内容的算法管理（例如，新闻源和搜索引擎中的优先级）；(4)在一个安全、隐私保护的框架内，为广泛的学术研究人员提供分析访问。有两个志愿者样本。第一种是规模更小、质量更高，在人口和地理方面精心平衡。第二种方法更大，对更多的志愿者开放，但因此可能不太平衡，因此需要用重新加权整个样本的方法来处理，以使其更具代表性。通过观察站，志愿者行为和平台行为都可以通过台式机、笔记本电脑和移动设备进行收集。该观测站涉及一个分层的管理系统，涉及广泛的研究人员，既要在研究伦理和安全方面完善协议，又要确定收集数据的优先事项。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The core objective of this project is the construction of a secure, privacy-protecting, ethically robust, scientifically valid online behavioral research observatory. This observatory captures the online behavior of a large sample of volunteers as well as details of the algorithmically driven decisions of the major platforms of the Internet. The observatory enables a wide range of research concerning the Internet, including examination of the state of the information ecosystem, analysis of damaging online behavior of a variety of types, and generally studies of manifold aspects of the online world. This infrastructure fills a gap by providing researchers with high-quality data on human and platform behavior at a scale and granularity that will allow transformational investigation of this new and all-pervasive phenomenon.This project (1) collects data on the online behavior of a large number of volunteers, on the order of tens of thousands of individuals, whose consent is carefully ascertained; (2) records the tracking of those individuals by third parties; (3) captures the algorithmic curation of content by third parties (e.g., what is prioritized in newsfeeds and search engines); and (4) provides analytic access to a wide set of academic researchers within a secure, privacy-preserving framework. There are two samples of volunteers. The first is smaller and higher quality, carefully balanced in terms of demography and geography. The second is larger and open to a wider array of volunteers but therefore potentially less balanced and therefore treated with methods to reweight the entire sample to be more representative. Through the observatory, both volunteer behavior and platform behavior are collected using desktops, laptops and mobile devices. The observatory involves a layered system of governance involving a wide array of researchers, both to refine protocols in terms of research ethics and security and to define the priorities for the data collected.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.