RecomendeMe Research

About RecomendeMe Research

RecomendeMe Research is an observational research environment built on a platform where users share and discover human-curated recommendations. It provides universities, researchers, and academic institutions with access to real, human-generated data on cultural preferences, recommendation behavior, and social patterns.

Unlike synthetic datasets or laboratory simulations, RecomendeMe Research enables empirical observation of how people recommend, discover, and engage with cultural content in naturalistic settings. The platform is currently being used in undergraduate research projects, capstone studies, and interdisciplinary academic work across cultural studies, communication, sociology, and digital humanities.

RecomendeMe Research serves as infrastructure for scholarly inquiry, not as a commercial product or innovation lab. Its purpose is to support rigorous, ethical research that contributes to our understanding of culture, identity, and social behavior in digital contexts.

Research Scope

Cultural and Digital Identity

RecomendeMe Research provides observational data on how individuals construct and express cultural identity through their recommendations. Researchers can examine patterns in taste formation, identity signaling, and the relationship between personal recommendations and broader cultural narratives.

Human-Curated Recommendation Systems

The platform offers insight into human recommendation behavior that occurs outside algorithmic mediation. Studies can explore what people choose to recommend, how recommendations function as social acts, and how human curation differs from automated content delivery systems.

Social Behavior and Collective Trends

Aggregated recommendation data allows researchers to study collective cultural phenomena, emerging trends, and shared patterns of cultural consumption. This includes analysis of temporal dynamics, geographic variation, and demographic differences in recommendation practices.

Media, Culture, and Society

RecomendeMe Research supports studies at the intersection of media studies, cultural analysis, and sociology. Researchers can investigate questions about canon formation, cultural gatekeeping, diversity in cultural representation, and the social functions of recommendation sharing.

RecomendeMe as a Research Infrastructure

Rather than a research project in itself, RecomendeMe functions as shared infrastructure that multiple researchers and institutions can use for distinct inquiries. It provides a stable, ethically maintained environment for longitudinal observation and comparative study.

Academic Use

RecomendeMe Research is used by students, researchers, and faculty for various forms of scholarly work:

• Undergraduate Research: Students conduct observational studies, qualitative analysis, and empirical projects using platform data.
• Capstone Projects (TCCs): Final-year students design research projects that draw on RecomendeMe data to address questions in their fields of study.
• Interdisciplinary Studies: Researchers across communication, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and digital humanities use the platform for cross-disciplinary inquiry.
• Datasets and Documentation: Anonymized, aggregated datasets are made available for approved research purposes, accompanied by methodological documentation.
• Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis: The platform supports both interpretive approaches and statistical analysis, depending on research questions and disciplinary conventions.

Ethics and Data Use

RecomendeMe Research is committed to ethical research practices and responsible data stewardship:

• Privacy: All research data is anonymized. Personal identifying information is never shared with researchers.
• Public Data: Only publicly shared recommendations—those users have explicitly chosen to make visible—are included in research datasets.
• Informed Consent: Users are informed that their public data may be used for research purposes and have the option to restrict this use.
• Institutional Review: Academic collaborators are expected to obtain appropriate ethical approval from their institutions before conducting research.
• Transparency: Data collection methods, aggregation procedures, and limitations are clearly documented for all researchers.
• Responsible Use: We do not support research that could harm individuals or communities, and we reserve the right to decline data access requests that raise ethical concerns.

RecomendeMe Research adheres to principles established by professional associations and research ethics boards in the social sciences and humanities.

Partnerships and Collaboration

We welcome collaboration with universities, research groups, and individual scholars. RecomendeMe Research can support:

• Institutional partnerships for ongoing research access
• Collaborative projects with multiple research teams
• Student research programs and thesis supervision
• Methodological workshops and training
• Data sharing agreements with ethical oversight

We are particularly interested in partnerships that advance understanding of cultural practices, digital behavior, and social patterns through empirical observation and rigorous analysis.

Contact and Academic Inquiries