Privacy Policy

This project is being carried out by Edinburgh Napier University. Further information on the institution can be found here: napier.ac.uk. Edinburgh Napier University is the Data Controller of your information.

This privacy notice explains how we use your personal information and your rights.

What information are we collecting?

We are collecting the text, date, time, and location of public social media postings related to Covid-19 without linking it to personal accounts.

Why are we collecting your data?

We are collecting data to understand how people are responding to public health policies related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

How is your data used?

We are using the texts of public posts to identify the sentiment and collective opinions towards Covid-19 related policies. We are using a set of automated tools to look at large sets of public messages and understand what feelings are being expressed. Then, we visualise the data to provide insight into the public collective opinion on public health policies and their changes over time. Furthermore, we show which issues are of most concern in different geographical areas.

We are not collecting personal information, such as account names, and are not showing the content of single public messages. The data and results cannot be related to you.

We are collaborating with researchers from Edinburgh University – no one else will have access to any of the data we gather from social networks directly.

We plan to share our research with other scientists to gain more knowledge, but when we do we will make sure that the data will be anonymised in line with social network policies, and doesn’t expose any private non-public data about you. We will keep the data in our archives for five years following publication.

What are your rights?

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. Please contact us at covidtracker@napier.ac.uk if you would like to make a request.

Who can I complain to?

Any complaints can be directed to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK95AF

0303 123 1113

Find more details and contact options at www.ico.org.uk