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The next speaker at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Joris Mulder, representing the Dutch LISS panel study which asked panel participants to donate their insights on energy use. LISS is a representative Dutch panel of some 7,500 participants; it includes a data donation element built on the Port software which only extracts the data points that are required.

However, in this study people were asked to directly upload their energy use insights as unstructured data to the survey. These may include screenshots, datasets, emails from energy providers, and other materials, and such participation was …

The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Theo Araujo, whose interest is in inferential biases in data donation samples. Willingness to donate data to such studies is very unevenly distributed, and this also means that we lack data on non-participants; but do such biases on donation patterns actually result in biases in the eventual analysis?

This study worked with an existing true probability sample in the Netherlands, and investigated personality traits, ideological beliefs, and digital skills as the main sources of potential bias in the willingness to donate data …

The next session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin starts with Jessica Daikeler, whose interest is in data donation studies focussing on WhatsApp. It remains unclear what drives people’s willingness to donate data to such studies, however, and this study tests these patterns. Who donates very directly influences the results of such studies, of course: data donors represent only a very small subset of the overall population, and are usually not very representative of it.

Such participation bias begins with the consent process: this introduces frictions, and loses participants in the process. Further, those who …

And the final speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Ericka Menchen-Trevino from BRIC, who will present a browser extension framework for capturing chatbot conversations that seeks to circumvent some of the issues with formal data donation processes. Data donations build on the right for users to download their platform history data, of course, but this is often made deliberately complex and time-consuming by the platforms; the data contained in such packages are often incomplete and poorly documented, too, and contain highly sensitive personalised data that researchers need to strip …

The next speakers in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin are Alexandra Wölfle and Michaela Forrai, whose interest is in linking panel data with chatbot history data donations. Their focus is on emerging adults, aged 18-29 – these are now also a key demographic for chatbot use, with some two thirds likely to have used a chatbot, for a range of purposes including informational and instrumental, social support, personal identity, and entertainment and escapism use.

Such chatbot use may foster wellbeing especially in professional contexts; but it may also have detrimental effects especially …

The next session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is on the role of chatbots in data donation studies, and begins with Daniël Jurg, whose focus is on news engagement via chat systems; this involves chatbot audits as well as as chatbot data donations.

The news environment is cacophonic today, and this has led users to employ various curation tactics that are also informed by algorithmic imaginaries; in chatbot environments, though, there is also automatic curation by the chatbot itself. Chatbot systems engage in conversational steering, and this is also a strategy available to users …

The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Zoltán Kmetty, whose focus is on difference between participant intentions and actual donations to data donation projects. There is a considerable willingness-to-donation gap, and methodological interventions are required to address this; the present project tested this during the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election by using AI chatbots as data donation assistants.

The study employed a standard data donation approach, but in the data donation module briefing split the participant base into two groups: one received a static data export guide, and the other …

The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Sophia Graf, whose focus is on the Dein Feed, Deine Wahl project conducted during several 2026 state elections in Germany. This uses data donations to study how TikTok distributes political content during these elections; it recruiters participants during public events and also reflects back to donors how their own content and engagement patterns compare to other TikTok users.

This is a form of citizen science, involving ordinary citizens in political communication research. Such approaches can increase the diversity of perspectives in the …

The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Elisabeth Schmidbauer, whose interest is especially in the role of visual communication in recruiting data donations. This was tested by using eye tracking and a post-exposure walkthrough of the eye-tracking data, in an experimental setting.

Key theoretical backgrounds here include social presence, tested by including a picture of the researcher in recruitment materials; the impact of AI-generated images in the communication of studies, where (poorly designed) AI content might put off potential participants; and the question of how much potential participants engage …

The next session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin starts with Olya Hakobyan, whose focus is on the question of how to scale up data donation studies. The first challenge is how to motivate and recruit participants, which is centrally a question of trust in the researchers; the second is dropouts of participants due to technical difficulties; the next is managing the influx of data donations, especially if studies have been able to recruit a substantial number of participants; and finally studies also need to confront the challenge of varying data quality in donations.

Olya’s …