The Australian Internet Observatory (AIO) Platform gives researchers at Australian universities a practical, ethics-first way to study how digital platforms shape everyday life. Designed especially for humanities and social sciences researchers, including those without advanced technical skills, the platform provides shared national infrastructure for creating and managing data donation projects involving services such as TikTok, Instagram, ChatGPT, Netflix, Facebook and Spotify.

By enabling participants to securely donate selected data from their personal platform archives with informed consent, researchers can investigate questions that surveys, interviews and publicly available data alone cannot answer — from recommendation systems and advertising to digital culture, health, education and public debate. The platform reduces the need for research teams to build complex technical systems from scratch, while keeping privacy, consent and institutional ethics requirements at the centre of the research process.

This event includes a 20 minute presentation followed by 40 mins for Q&A.