How does misinformation spread through a population? Why do some communities remain resilient while others fracture? How is trust built up across Dutch society? The Dutch Research Council (NWO) National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructure is funded €16.8 million to answer questions like these and build the Macroscope—the world's first population-level research infrastructure designed to observe and understand how societies change over time.
Coordinated by Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Macroscope is a collaborative initiative by two major Dutch research infrastructures: ODISSEI, focused on social science and economic data, and CLARIAH, which houses cultural and linguistic archives.
The Macroscope will allow researchers to securely link and analyse massive datasets spanning social, cultural, and digital domains across the entire Dutch population. The project unites 14 Dutch universities with leading institutes, including Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the Netherlands eScience Center, the National Library (KB), the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (B&G), and the KNAW Humanities Cluster.
From Cells to Societies: A New Lens on Social Change
"Just as the microscope revealed the hidden world of cells, the Macroscope can help reveal the hidden dynamics of societies," said Dr. Tom Emery, Principal Investigator and Executive Director of ODISSEI (Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations). "For the first time, we will be able to observe how ideas, languages, and inequalities percolate across an entire population—safely, ethically, and collaboratively."
Understanding complex social dynamics requires both scale and security. To study how trust develops in a society, researchers need to see how media coverage impacts people's opinions, and how shifts in those opinions influence friends, colleagues, and neighbours. This type of complexity demands an instrument with the scale of a Macroscope.
"The Macroscope is an outstanding collaboration between the Social Sciences and the Humanities and will allow us to zoom in and out to study how our culture, language, and institutions change over time." noted Prof. Susan Aasman, Co-Principal Investigator and Director of CLARIAH.
Built for Researchers, Secure by Design
Researchers work in highly secure environments where they can analyse sensitive pseudonymized population data for approved purposes, but never copy or remove it. This protects privacy while enabling research.
The Macroscope consists of four integrated components: secure data vaults, unified data sources bringing together surveys and archives, AI tools developed and evaluated for research, and a public access portal for researchers and citizens alike.
For researchers like Ana Macanović at Utrecht University, who studies how cooperative relationships emerge through language and media representation, the AI infrastructure is particularly significant. "While Large Language Models are invaluable for text analysis, transparent open-source model infrastructure is key to protecting scientific data without sacrificing computational power," she explained. "The Macroscope will be crucial for achieving this."
This balance between computational power and data protection reflects the broader challenge the Macroscope addresses: enabling cutting-edge research while maintaining public trust.
Tackling Society's Pressing Questions
Once fully operational in 2030, the Macroscope will empower researchers to address critical societal challenges—from understanding the spread of misinformation and erosion of social trust, to tracking the evolution of language and media, and analysing the long-term effects of demographic change.
"The Netherlands has built world-leading infrastructures for research," said Prof. Daniel Oberski, Co-Principal Investigator and Scientific Director of ODISSEI. "The Macroscope connects them—giving us, quite literally, a new lens on society."
For more information:
Visit www.odissei-data.nl and https://clariah.nl/
National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructure
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a total of €197 million to eleven projects under the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructure (LSRI).
The LSRI programme enables the development and renewal of essential research facilities that strengthen the Dutch scientific landscape.
- More information
Marjolein Kooistra, communications ESSB, 0683676038, kooistra@essb.eur.nl
or
Dr. Tom Emery – Principal Investigator, tom@odissei-data.nl- Related content
