Data Donation Day

On a total of six Data Donation Days, the Data Donation Lab used stand campaigns to draw attention to the still largely unknown topic and raise awareness among passers-by, students and scientists about their right to their own data. In addition to the locations in the pedestrian zones of Zurich and Winterthur, the Data Donation Lab was also a guest at the four universities of the Zurich Digitization Initiative (DIZH) to provide information about the innovative research method.

Project participants from four institutes presented their projects and the collective benefits of data donation on site. They explained to interested participants how they can download their personal user data from Meta, Google and Co. and donate it to the projects. This process was also made tangible with various playful installations and a competition. Many participants found the personal analysis, which was generated immediately after the data donation and thus provided insights into their own data, particularly exciting. This not only created a benefit for science, but also for the participants – in other words, multiple upcycling.

In total, almost 200 participants donated their data for four selected research projects on the influence of social media and artificial intelligence on our political opinion-forming, mental health, daily media use and perception of science.

In the end, the donation barometer showed a data set of over 525,000 search queries and videos watched on YouTube, 368,000 views and likes on Instagram, 97,000 search queries on Google and 292 conversation logs on ChatGPT.