Triangulating Data Donations with Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. Epistemological, Methodological, and Ethical Considerations on Participatory Research

Data donations are increasingly becoming part of the sociological methodological toolkit. As a form of participatory research involving individuals willing to contribute their personal data for social research purposes, donated data has been integrated with a variety of qualitative, quantitative, and computational approaches to study phenomena ranging from cultural consumption and algorithmic curation to media use.

While this has been welcomed as a practice that foregrounds participant involvement and fosters awareness between participants, concerns have also been raised about whether and how data donations can be approached ethically, particularly regarding informed consent, data sensitivity, and the asymmetries of knowledge between researchers and participants.

Methodologically, data donations have been combined with surveys, in-depth interviews, and walkthrough methods in a variety of triangulation designs. Yet how these combinations are best calibrated - and what each method distinctively contributes to the analytical picture - remains an open question. Epistemologically, the intermediation of digital infrastructures, platform affordances, social backgrounds, and individual factors introduces constraints on what donated data can and cannot tell us, which remain undertheorized.

This session welcomes interdisciplinary papers drawing on mixed-method approaches. We specifically welcome contributions addressing:

• Empirical examples of data donation studies
• Epistemological reflections on the limits and potentials of donated data
• Infrastructural and technical considerations in designing data donation pipelines
• Action-research approaches where the donation process itself becomes an educational intervention
• The integration of data donation with ethnographic or digital ethnographic approaches
• How participants make sense of their own data when confronted with it during research encounters