The technological expansion has moved a substantial part of human life towards the computer or/and smartphone screens, changing some human behaviors and yielding new ones. This digital metamorphosis has changed how people communicate, interact, and search for information – in recent years, almost 54% of the world population and 87% of the developed world was using the Internet daily (International Telecommunication Union, 2019). The intensity of digital technology usage is growing fast – that is why people tend to rely on digital technology in various areas of life. Nowadays, worldwide average internet users ask different types of questions roughly twice a day. For example, in the USA, the average adult checks their phone nearly 30 times a day. At the same time, for adolescents, this number reaches 157 times daily (Zuboff, 2019). Consistently, in the UK, adults spend more than half of their working hours engaged in media or communication activities. That time has doubled over the past decade (Ofcom, 2015). Statistics showed that more than 80% of respondents between 16 and 44 years have a social media profile (International Telecommunication Union, 2019). Therefore, undoubtedly, online behaviors (e.g., social media interactions) have become an unavoidable part of a daily routine for people worldwide.
Most of these behaviors are recorded and stored as individual-level fine-grained time-stamped datasets containing online trace data and are called a digital footprint. Most of these behaviors are recorded and stored as fine-grained time-stamped datasets at the individual level as online trace data called a digital footprint. The data are available for millions or billions of users. It is extraordinary for social science and could be compared only with massive research endeavors like particle accelerators or genomic studies in natural sciences. For some researchers, newly developed possibilities of observing online activity might have a transformative effect on social sciences. For instance, it may create an opportunity for new trajectories in their methodology and questionnaires/survey development. However, this point of view was not commonly shared by researchers in social science methodology. Broadly, they have ignored the digital data revolution, comparing such data to a hard-to-analyze black box.
Notwithstanding, we believe that online data will not eliminate the need to use surveys but will substantially enhance their usability. For example, they may provide additional means for calibration, cross-validation, and checking vital theoretical assumptions. We claim that proper handling of online data, hand in hand with the classical surveys, may help address fundamental questions of social science. It also provides a method for going through severe constraints for access to data.
This project aims to advance methods to use joint digital footprints and survey to solve social problems (i.e., trust, attitudes towards migration, environment, and governments, misinformation, and polarization of attitudes). To do that, we propose a large methodologically oriented study that will utilize five sources of data: representative survey data, online trace data, data from a panel study (mixing survey and online trace data), experimental studies, and qualitative data.
The project started in February 2022 and will last until January 2027. It is funded by a research grant from the National Science Center (Sonata Bis-10: UMO-2020/38 / E / HS6 / 00302). The value of the granted funds equals PLN 3,983,436. The project will be led at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.