Privacy policy
Last updated 11 September 2026
This policy explains what personal data the Agora News Study collects, why it is collected, who handles it, and what you can ask us to do with it. If anything here is unclear, contact privacy@agoranewsstudy.org.
Who is responsible
The data controllers are the two researchers running the study: Rafael Jiménez-Durán (Bocconi University, Via Sarfatti 25, 20136 Milan, Italy) and Karthik Srinivasan (University of Michigan, United States). Only these two have access to data that has not been anonymized. The study is conducted under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679; the Data Protection Officer at Bocconi University can be reached at DPO@unibocconi.it.
What we collect
Account and enrollment
- Your Prolific ID, used to pay you and to invite you to the closing survey. It is held in a separate record from your study data and can be removed; see Withdrawal and deletion.
- A single-use enrollment code.
- An assigned pseudonymous display name.
- Your group assignment and the version of the app used by that group.
Survey answers
- Baseline and closing survey responses, including demographics, political affiliation, political attitudes, and beliefs.
- Responses to incentivized valuation questions.
Activity in the app
- Posts and replies.
- In some versions of the app, amounts sent to or received from other members, and your balance.
- Mutes, reports, and moderation outcomes.
- Which articles you open, when you open and close them, and time spent reading.
We do not collect your name, address, phone contacts, precise location, or advertising identifiers through the app. The app does not track you across other apps or websites.
Automated checks on submitted content
Posts and replies are checked automatically before they appear. Submitted text is sent to OpenAI for content classification, and a pattern-matching check blocks contact details such as email addresses and phone numbers. Flagged content may be reviewed by a member of the research team.
Legal basis
We process your data on the basis of your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you give before taking part. Political opinions receive special protection under Article 9 GDPR, and this study deliberately collects political affiliation, political attitudes, and political speech; we process these on the basis of your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a)), for scientific research purposes with the safeguards required by Article 89(1), including pseudonymization and restricted access.
You can withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before it, and does not affect payment for parts of the study you have completed.
Who else handles study data
| Provider | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel Inc. | Application and website hosting | United States |
| Databricks, Inc. (Neon) | Database infrastructure | United States |
| Grafana Labs | Infrastructure services | United States |
| OpenAI | Content classification | United States |
| Qualtrics | Survey administration | European Union (Frankfurt) |
| Prolific | Recruitment and payment | United Kingdom |
We do not sell participant data or share it with advertisers.
International transfers
Several providers above process data in the United States, and one of the two researchers is based there. Transfers to the United States rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it, and on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses otherwise; transfers to the United Kingdom rely on the Commission's adequacy decision. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards in place.
Withdrawal and deletion
You can stop at any time without giving a reason. Payment for parts you have already completed is not affected.
You can delete your account from inside the app. Your login is disabled immediately. Any outstanding payment is made to your Prolific account, and your Prolific ID is then permanently removed from all study records, within 14 days. After that, no one — including us — can trace your data back to you.
Your survey answers, posts, and app activity remain in the dataset under your pseudonym, because the results could not be verified without them. Posts stay visible to your group under that pseudonym until the group ends. This cannot be reversed: once the link is removed, we can no longer find your records.
For everyone else, the link between records and Prolific IDs is destroyed within one year of the study's end, after which all data are fully anonymized.
If you no longer have the app installed, you can request deletion at agoranewsstudy.org/delete-account.
Your rights
While your data remains identifiable, you have the rights set out in Articles 15 to 18 GDPR: to access your data, to correct it, to have it erased, and to restrict its processing. Write to privacy@agoranewsstudy.org; we reply within 30 days. When data are processed for research these rights are not absolute: under Article 17(3)(d), erasure does not apply where it would make the research objectives impossible or seriously impair them, which is why deletion works as described above. Once records have been anonymized we can no longer find yours.
You may also complain to the Italian supervisory authority, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (garanteprivacy.it), or to the authority where you live.
Security
Study data is protected using technical and organizational safeguards. Access is limited to authorized members of the research team. Participants are identified to one another by pseudonym.
Age
The study is for adults aged 18 and over.
Contact
Privacy and data requests: privacy@agoranewsstudy.org