A practical guide to LinkedIn advertising reach data for social science: Methods, challenges, and five applications

Saila Stausholm and Javier Garcia-Bernardo

No 26/1, MPIfG Discussion Paper from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Abstract: LinkedIn data offers a unique way to study how professional groups and organizations underpin economic and political life. This paper shows how LinkedIn's advertising reach data, which provides anonymized counts of users by job title, skills, employer, and location, can be used to study organizational and professional dynamics relevant to a wide range of issues in political economy and economic sociology. We showcase the potential through five illustrative cases: 1) the revolving doors between Wall Street and US financial regulators; 2) the geography of professionals such as accountants and bankers; 3) the professional composition of interdisciplinary firms such as antitrust consulting firms; 4) recruitment by different industries and specifically big professional services firms in the face of new regulatory demands for sustainability reporting; and 5) the emergence of a profession of cyber security professionals over time. Alongside these examples, we provide a step-by-step guide for implementing the method in practice and discuss how linking professional attributes with geographical or organizational characteristics can provide new answers to various research questions. We hope this paper serves as a helpful practical guide as well as inspiration for new research questions.

Keywords: computational social science; LinkedIn; organizational behavior; professionals; social media; computergestützte Sozialwissenschaft; Fachpersonal; LinkedIn; Organisationsverhalten; Social Media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:341980

DOI: 10.17617/2.3706150

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