Archiving and Publishing Digital Behavioral Data

Since 2013 Gesis has been actively involved in and managed project covering 'digital behavioral data' (DBD). This concept encompasses digital observations of human and algorithmic behavior which are, amongst others, recorded by online platforms like Facebook or the World Wide Web, or by sensors like smartphones, or RFID sensors. It focuses on the societally relevant aspects of human and algorithmic behaviour and the research perspectives derived from this. Since 2022, GESIS has strategically shifted its focus more towards digital behavioral data, and based on a special purpose grant was also able to intensify its engagement in this area. The methodical research on the collection, analysis, and quality of DBD at GESIS is accompanied by the development of new services. This presentation gives insights into the technical, organizational, and legal challenges that had to be overcome and the solutions Gesis has developed so far to archiving and publishing this type of data collected by internal and external projects. It covers the legal bases Gesis considers, the workflow to ingest new digital behavioral data, the handling of large data quantities, the expansion of existing metadata schemas, as well as the access to the data on-site and (perspectively) off-site. While some aspects are still under development, we present the current state, focusing on two data types as pilots: data collected from online platforms (social media), and data collected via web tracking browser plugins from study participants who donated their web browsing histories.