This webpage details the privacy policy of the 'Mobile Observation Ad Toolkit' software application for mobile devices. In reading the following information about the application, you can determine whether you wish to take part in the research project facilitated through the app. You are also encouraged to ask any questions about involvement in the project by contact methods provided at the end of the policy.
If you decide to participate in this research, please keep in mind that your participation is voluntary. If you do not wish to take part, you do not have to. If you decide to take part and later change your mind, you are free to stop at any time, and you would not need to give any explanation for your decision to stop participating. If you choose to stop participating, your data will not be used in the research facilitated by the app.
In order to consent to the terms described in this privacy policy, you will need to accept the participant information sheet issued through the registration process of the app. You will be able to refer the participant information sheet at any time thereafter by accessing the app's main page. Your decision whether you take part, or not to take part, or to take part and then withdraw, will not affect your relationship with the University of Queensland.
This project aims to explore digital alcohol advertising on three social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. The digital ads that appear in our feeds are personalised based on data such as the posts we like, the accounts we follow, the videos we watch, and more. Because these ads are personalised and disappear as we scroll past them, we are unable to clearly see how we are targeted by digital advertising. By participating in this project, you will help us study digital advertising that is otherwise invisible.
Lauren Hayden is organising this project as part of her doctoral research. This work is funded by an ARC Linkage project, “Young Australians and the promotion of alcohol and nightlife on social media”, led by Associate Professor Nicholas Carah.
If you agree to participate, we will invite you to collect digital advertising that appears in your Instagram, Facebook and TikTok feeds for two weeks before participating in an interview with our research team.
You will be asked to install an app called The Mobile Observation Ad Toolkit from the Google Play Store onto your Android smartphone. This app takes a screenshot of advertising that appears in Facebook, Instagram or TikTok apps. All ads you collect will be added to an album within the app, where you The University of Queensland T +61 7 3365 2552 E L.Hayden@uq.edu.au ABN: 63 942 912 684 Brisbane QLD 4072 Australia F W uq.edu.au CRICOS Provider 00025B can send them to our research database. During the two-week collection period, our research team will check in with you via an agreed upon method (email, SMS, Messenger, etc.).
After collecting digital advertising, you will share findings (only those you wish to share) with the research team in an interview which will be audio-recorded and transcribed. The interview will take one hour, or more if you choose. The interview will take place at a mutually agreed location.
With your consent, the 'Mobile Observation Ad Toolkit' app is designed to collect a range of demographic characteristics about you. These demographic characteristics include your gender, postal code, indigeneity status, level of education, annual income, age range, employment status, status of current residence within Australian, and political party preference. As part of the registration, you may also choose to inhibit the supply of the majority of these characteristics. We stress that we do not collect your name, email address, or any detail that could be used to personally identify you.
Once you have registered and consented to participate in the research project, we then collect screenshots of the advertisement content that is marketed to you through Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Again, we do not collect any details about you, or your personal social platform profiles.
Part of the image analysis involves digitally processing the screen recordings that come through the device. As social media apps alone do not constitute the entire viewing experience of a mobile device's usage, it becomes an issue that the app then spends time and computational resources processing screen-recordings that yield no valuable data.
To get around this, Android provides the Accessibility Services API that can help the app get a better idea of when to collect data, and when to discard it.
Consider the scenario of advertisements posted on social media platforms. The Android Accessibility Services API can be used in this situation to determine that the device is within the relevant apps - it can then relay this information to the screen-recording service, advising it to either retain or discard data that will be processed further down the line.
It is stressed that while this app checks whether the user is within said apps, that no data is retained about the explicit app names that the person has visited on their device in any of the app's functionality.
Upon reading data from these events, the app accesses the application package name of the mobile application in question that the user is currently interacting with; it then checks the package name to determine whether it coincides with an app currently being examined by the Mobile Observation Ad Toolkit.
Partial to the screen-recording functionality of the app, this process is done to enable the app to discard screen-recordings of apps that are not relevant to the Mobile Observation Ad Toolkit, which reduces processing requirements and consequently improves the user experience of the app.
All information collected about you will remain confidential. All data will be stored in accordance with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2007) and the University of Queensland's Research Management Policy (PPL 4.20.06). Data collected by the app will be stored on a QUT server, and all other project data will be stored on UQ servers. As stored data will be re- identifiable, it will also be encrypted to ensure data security. Data will be only accessible by the researcher and relevant supervisory team. Data from this project may be used for future research. It is anticipated that the results of this research project will be published and/or presented in a variety of forms. In any publication and/or presentation, information will be provided in such a way that you cannot be identified, except with your expressed permission. We will anonymise your contributions by removing names, locations and other potentially identifying information. We will also only use selective excerpts from interviews and will not publish the full transcripts in any reports or publications.
This project will improve our understanding of how users are targeted with digital advertising on social media platforms. You will be paid $100 to recognise your voluntary contributions of time and knowledge to the project.
There are minimal risks associated with your participation in this research project.
These might include: inconvenience of having to install the mobile app, inconvenience of day-to-day app operations, technical issues during installation or operation of the mobile app, or revelation of personally identifiable user information. We have addressed the first three of these by making it as easy as possible to install the browser plugin, testing it thoroughly, and minimising its impact on your day-to-day mobile device use. You will be able to delete any images you would not like to share, including those with personal or sensitive information, in the unlikely event it is collected. The risk of being identified is managed by assigning pseudonym names. If you are concerned about the risks of participating you are free to withdraw from the study at any time.
We will ask you about your alcohol consumption practices, if you are concerned about your alcohol consumption you can talk to your GP. You can find a local GP at healthdirect.gov.au or by calling 1800 022 222.
Your participation in this research is voluntary and you are free to withdraw from the research anytime without needing to provide any explanation, and you would not receive any penalty or bias as a result of your withdrawal. Should you decide to withdraw, all the information collected from/about you will be destroyed and will not be used in the research.
Participants from this study can request to view the final outcomes from this study. You can do this by contacting the lead researcher. You will have access only to published outcomes, where the details are non-identifiable. You do not have the opportunity to review or edit any responses made during this study, but you can retract all given data by withdrawing from the project.
This study adheres to the Guidelines of the ethical review process of The University of Queensland and the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. Whilst you are free to discuss your participation in this study with the researcher, Associate Professor Nic Carah, contactable on n.carah@uq.edu.au. If you would like to speak to an officer of the University not involved in the study, you may contact the Ethics Coordinator on +617 3365 3924 / +617 3443 1656 or email humanethics@research.uq.edu.au
This research Ethics ID number: 2023/HE002131
- Associate Professor Nicholas Carah, The University of Queensland (UQ)
- Lauren Hayden, The University of Queensland (UQ)
- Dr Giselle Newton, The University of Queensland (UQ)
- Professor Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
- Dr Abdul Obeid, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
- Jane Tan, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)