Social media platforms play a central role in shaping today’s information ecosystem, yet access to both their internal data and even publicly visible content remains tightly restricted for academic researchers. This stands in sharp contrast to other industries, such as food and pharmaceuticals, where researchers can independently study product ingredients and effects. As a result, academic research on social media faces an unprecedented dependency on industry-controlled data, increasing the risk of bias and potentially distorting the evidence needed for effective regulation and policymaking. Drawing on research from other disciplines, we examine how industry influence operates and how researchers’ reliance on platforms for data may amplify industry influence. We identify four challenges in collaborations between researchers and social media platforms: restricted data access, selective funding, hard-to-detect influence, and institutional entanglements. These challenges risk undermining the independence and transparency of research in a field of growing societal relevance. Addressing these challenges requires policymakers to regulate data access, as illustrated by the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which mandates data access for vetted researchers while safeguarding user privacy. In addition, new independent funding mechanisms could help ensure that research agendas remain free from platform interests. In parallel, the social science community must adopt stronger ethical standards and invest in “research on research” to detect and mitigate potential biases in policy-relevant research. With a dual approach—policy reforms and critical academic debates—we can ensure that research on social media platforms serves the public interest rather than platform priorities.
- Raffael Heiss
- Isabelle Freiling
