Privacy notice on data collection

  1. In this project we aim to develop novel computational methods for recommending, summarizing, and visualizing content in online media. To assess the relevance and effectiveness of our methods we collect and process data from social media platforms via publicly-accessible APIs.
  2. For the data collection we follow a topic-driven approach. In more detail, we first define a topic of interest (e.g., a topic focusing on a societal debate) and then collect content from social media accounts that have exhibited interest on the topic (e.g., used certain keywords or participated in the discussion).
  3. The data we collect may reveal opinions about certain political issues of other societal debates.
  4. We immediately pseudo-anonymize the collected data by replacing user-account IDs with randomly- generated IDs. We only keep information that is relevant to our research objectives, in particular, information about the content of the discussions and associated network structure (e.g., user interactions). All the data that we collect are already publicly available. We do not link the user accounts to any form of identifying personal information or other demographics (gender, age, race, location, etc.).
  5. The conclusions and findings of our studies are published in aggregate statistical forms. We do not publish any result for any particular individual.
  6. Data are kept in secure data centers or in KTH-managed password-protected laptops, for the duration of this project.
  7. The actual dataset corpora that we collect are not publicly available for privacy considerations. For research reproducibility purposes we will make publicly available aggregate characteristics and statistical summaries of our data. It will not be possible to identify any individual from the data we will publish.
  8. Data is being processed for the purposes of scientific research, and the data is not used in decision-making related to the participant.
  9. The lawful basis for personal data processing is scientific research, a task carried out in the public interest.
  10. According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data subjects have the right
    • to obtain information on the processing of their personal data
    • of access to their data
    • to request rectification of their data
    • to request restricting the processing of their data
    • to object to the processing of their data
    • to erasure, if research data have been unlawfully processed and processing is no longer necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific research purposes or statistical purposes and erasure of research data will not render impossible or seriously impair objectives of scientific research.
  11. The following protection measures have been enacted in this research:
    • The processing of personal data is based on a research plan.
    • The research has a responsible principle investigator (see Rebound team)
    • The personal data is used and disclosed only for the purposes of scientific research and all parties involved in the research agree to ensure that no data pertaining to any specific individuals is disclosed to any third parties.
    • The research involves the processing of special categories of research data. An impact assessment on this processing has been made.
    • There is an ethical review (date and name of ethical committee to be completed)
  12. More information on the study and the exercising of your rights
    • The controller in this study is KTH.
    • The contact person in matters related to the research study is the project principle investigator (see Rebound team)
    • The data collection process has been reviewed by the KTH Data Protection Officer (DPO)
    • If the research participant sees that their data has been processed in violation of the General Data Protection Regulation or data protection legislation, the participant has the right to lodge a complaint with the DPO.