Transparency and access to data from platforms are essential to the generation of knowledge,  the advancement of research agendas, and the defense of improvements in platform policies. Despite this importance, the platform transparency and access to their data varies significantly and according to several factors, with significant disparities between the access of researchers from the United States and the European Union and from the Global South. This different level of access to data, which can be seen in the differences in university infrastructures and interaction with platforms, directly affects the potential for producing high-impact research with different perspectives and epistemologies in these different regions.

An example of differentiated access to platform data is the Social Science One organization, founded by Facebook in 2018 and hosted by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. According to its website, the organization formed a consortium with social science research centers, especially in the US and Europe, “to share information about models for industry-academic partnerships, learn how to access company data for social scientific research in privacy protective ways, enable the flow of information between our sectors, and simultaneously optimize the interests of academia, companies, governments, universities, regulators, and the public good”¹. Even though since 2019 organizations from the Global South have begun to participate in Social Science One initiative, access to data through the organization is still unequal, particularly for independent researchers, who can rarely access data through this initiative. 

In this context in which access to platform data is of key importance, InternetLab is developing a project in which it aims to: 

1. Map the challenges and barriers that researchers face in accessing data from platforms in Latin America;
2. Understand how Latin American researchers perceive the transparency policies and practices of data sharing of platforms and how this affects the development of research;
3. Investigate how regional inequalities and contextual differences impact partnerships with platforms, dialogue opportunities  with the private sector, and the use of resources for the production of knowledge and scientific research on social networking platforms and new technologies in Latin America, contrasting with the realities in the United States and Europe; 
4. Outline possible future research agendas and raise new concerns related to the production of knowledge about digital platforms from a Latin American perspective; 
5. Contribute to the qualification of the discussion on platform transparency as a means of fostering accountability and stimulating the production of academic research that addresses inequalities of race, gender and territory.  

The questions that guide the research are: 

1. What are the perceptions of Latin American researchers on the transparency practices of platforms?
2. What are the barriers identified by Latin American researchers to meaningful transparency by platforms?
3. What transparency frameworks are being implemented in the region and how?

Methodology

To answer these questions, the research followed a qualitative approach, collecting data through focus groups and semi-structured in-depth interviews. The aim of the focus groups was to facilitate dialog between different researchers, identifying points of consensus and of disagreement regarding the different perspectives, perceptions and challenges they identified. In-depth interviews, on the other hand, aim to delve deeper into the points identified in the focus groups, based on the specific research experiences of the interviewees.