Data donation is a research method that lets people voluntarily share copies of their own social media and digital data with researchers. Instead of asking platforms for access, we ask the users themselves. The result is a direct, accurate view of what people see and do online.
NORC has led the development of data donation in the United States and scaled it through AmeriSpeak®, our nationally representative survey panel. That combination gives clients something no other approach can: a clear, trustworthy picture of how digital media shape health, behavior, and opinion across the U.S. population. It is faster and more affordable than traditional methods, and participants themselves describe it as “ethically sourced” because they choose what to share and how it gets used.
How It Works
Data donation pairs the scale and representativeness of NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel with consent-based access to participants’ own digital media data.
1.
Recruit
Participants are sampled through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel, a probability-based survey panel designed to represent the U.S. household population.
2.
Invite
During the survey, respondents with accounts on relevant platforms are invited to share their own digital media data for research.
3.
Donate
Consenting participants request their data directly from the platforms, then upload it to NORC through a secure portal designed to protect their privacy and confidentiality.
4.
Analyze
NORC researchers process the donated data through custom analytic pipelines and link them to participants’ survey responses and demographic information.
The NORC Advantage
NORC is uniquely positioned to deliver data donation studies at scale.
Our AmeriSpeak solution provides a nationally representative recruitment foundation that few other organizations can match, allowing donated data to be linked with rich demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral information already on file.
NORC’s Social Data Collaboratory brings together social scientists, data scientists, and communication researchers who have spent more than a decade developing the methods, infrastructure, and safeguards required to do this work responsibly.
What This Means for Your Research
A combination of representative sampling, deep methodological expertise, and ethically sourced data gives clients insights that traditional methods cannot match.
Data donation delivers faster timelines and lower costs than many traditional digital media studies, and because it runs on AmeriSpeak, the findings can be generalized to the U.S. population. Clients get evidence that holds up to scrutiny, on a schedule that supports real decisions.
The method supports research across a wide range of subjects, from public health and consumer behavior to political communication, marketing exposure, youth well-being, and the influence of artificial intelligence on information environments. Because donated data capture both paid advertising and organic content, they surface patterns of exposure that traditional survey or advertising-buy data cannot reveal.
Have a research question that data donation could help answer? Get in touch with Sherry Emery at emery-sherry@norc.org.
Data Donation in Action
Our recent work shows how data donation can reveal new insights about the digital environments shaping health behaviors, consumer exposure, and public opinion.
Our Experts
NORC’s data donation work is led by researchers in the Social Data Collaboratory who combine subject-matter expertise in public health and digital communication with advanced methods in computational social science, survey research, and data engineering.
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Sherry Emery
DirectorDirector -
Soubhik Barari
Senior Research Methodologist -
Miao Feng
Senior Research Scientist -
Dani Heide
Senior Research Director -
Yoonsang Kim
Principal Data Scientist -
Anna Kostygina
Principal Research Scientist -
Alex Kresovich
Research Scientist
