CSMaP Mobile Activity Survey Application (MASA) is a mobile application developed by research engineers at the NYU Center of Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) in collaboration with Audacious Software. The application passively collects diagnostic and user behavioral information from registered and consenting research participants. To be part of a study, a participant first completes a survey and opts-in to share usage information on a select set of applications on their mobile device that the app is set to monitor. Participants are then provided a User ID associated with the study. The IDs is required to register and use the MASA app
Data collected through the mobile app is anonymized and used for academic research purposes only. All collected diagnostic and user behavioral observation data is securely stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and only accessible to CSMaP software engineers and researchers.