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Title: Leveraging Facebook’s Advertising Platform to Monitor Stocks of Migrants

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: Online advertising is the main source of revenue for social media companies. Facebook allows advertisers to target users with certain characteristics, such as age, gender, country of origin, education level, or topical interest. Before an ad is launched Facebook’s advertising platform provides an estimate of how many users match the provided criteria. This functionality, akin to a ‘digital census’ over Facebook users, has so far been untapped for demographic research. We show the feasibility of estimating stocks of migrants within and across countries and discuss the potentials and limitations of the data. The lack of much needed information about migrants, together with the rapid global expansion of social media use and the online advertising industry, o↵er new opportunities to study migration as well as monitor progress towards achieving the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Url: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12102

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Authors: Zagheni, Emilio; Weber, Ingmar; Gummadi, Krishna

Periodical (Full): Population and Development Review

Issue: 4

Volume: 43

Pages: 721-734

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Methodology and Data Collection, Migration and Immigration, Other

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