Doing Research With Online Platforms

Abstract

The post-API age in digital research has brought immediate consequences in research activities based on (big) data owned by online platforms. Even some initiatives made by online platforms themselves, mainly based on funding specific research projects, have not found a warm reception in the research community and have been considered not enough to do research on the most relevant phenomena of the digital public sphere. Therefore, since the access-to-data has become a relevant issue even for civil society organizations and public actors dealing with digital ecosystem, a specific brand-new issue network among public institutions, NGOs, and researches has been established. The technical expertise, the shared interests, and the fulfilment of similar goals in shaping public values in the online platforms activities seem to be crucial to the permanence and even to the institutionalization of such an issue network.