​Overview

​Platform accountability is a massive and growing problem yet access to platform data - such as for social media and chatbots - remains precarious, creating significant risks for researchers, institutions and ultimately the public

​Access to data and researcher is essential for research on issues of significant public interest from children’s mental health to national security. Yet researchers in the UK and many other jurisdictions are currently unable to obtain this data reliably, lawfully or at scale.

Without this access, policies designed to address online harms --- like the UK's Online Safety Act and Canada's Bill C34, the Safe Social Media Act --- lack critical access needed to independently measure and verify the impacts of platforms on society and effectiveness of interventions to mitigate harm.

Join us October 15 at 9am for a conversation with the Social Platforms Data Access Taskforce on their recently launched report, A Year of Evidence: Insights and Recommendations on Social Media Data Access for Research into Online Harms, which sets out concrete policy options for strengthening data access policies for governments and researchers.

​About Our Speakers

​Dr Alexandra Boutopoulou is a UKRI Research Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on researcher access to social media data for the study of online harms. She is the lead author of A Year of Evidence: Insights and Recommendations on Social Media Data Access for Research into Online Harms, the final report of the Social Platforms Data Access Taskforce, a national initiative supported by Smart Data Research UK (SDR UK) that works to improve researchers' access to social media data. Before moving into academia, Alexandra spent nearly two decades in senior commercial roles at global media agencies and TV broadcasters, where she worked directly with major platforms. She holds a PhD in Big Data and Visual Social Media and an MSc in Data Science.

​Vineet John Samuel leads policy research and advocacy at the Coalition for Independent Technology Research where he produces its annual flagship publication, The State of Independent Technology Research. He is also a Doctoral Researcher at the Hertie School, where he studies the economic and social impacts of the platform economy in developing nations.His work spans technology policy, platform regulation, AI governance, social policy, and the digital economy. He was awarded the German Chancellors Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and previously served as the Asia Democracy Network Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. He has also contributed to the G20 policy process through T20 research on responsible AI and open-source development.Vineet holds a Master in Public Policy from the National Law School of India University and studied at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He has been a TEDx speaker, and his research and commentary have appeared in publications including Tech Policy Press, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Indian Express, HuffPost, Asia Times, Mizzima (Myanmar), and New Age (Bangladesh).

​Peter Chapman, Deputy Director, directs KGI’s work translating evidence into litigation and accountability tools while also serving as our EU lead. Previously he was Technology & Human Rights Lead at Article One and Senior Legal Counsel at Twitter, where he co-led its Content Governance Initiative. He has also worked on rights and accountability with Open Society Foundations, the World Bank, and the Carter Center. An attorney with a J.D. from American University, he serves on the OECD’s Expert Group on AI Risk & Accountability.