Social Media Data Access to Reduce Online Harms: A Call for Action

There are substantial barriers to social media data access for researchers in the UK. Such data is currently largely unavailable, but remains critical to allow us to understand, highlight and ultimately address online harms that impact our nation. In this short report, we outline these issues and calling for them to be taken more seriously across the sector. We compare the UK contexts to international benchmarks, and make a series of actionable recommendations to enable data access for vetted researchers in the UK.