European researchers want to study social media’s harms but can’t get the data
European researchers are struggling to access TikTok data to study disinformation campaigns, specifically regarding political influence in Romania. Despite the Digital Services Act, TikTok denied access, even as the platform later identified thousands of fake accounts linked to political manipulation.
Why it matters
This highlights the tension between platform transparency mandates and the practical difficulties researchers face in auditing algorithmic influence on democratic elections.
His posts, espousing hard-line views on immigration and anti-Semitic tropes, were viewed 120 million times before the vote. Georgescu, who had previously been polling in the single digits, stunned observers by winning the election’s first round with 23 percent of the vote.
In the Netherlands, Adriana Iamnitchi was watching closely. As chair of computational social sciences at Maastricht University, she leads the research into disinformation campaigns. She wanted to know how pro-Georgescu content was being monetized on TikTok through hidden- influencer marketing and livestreamed political content.
On October 28, 2025, a month before Georgescu won the first round, she and her team applied for access to TikTok’s Application Programming Interface (API) under the EU’s recent Digital Services Act (DSA).
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in