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Category: Analysis

Description: This dataset provides information about all the apps that are part of the [COVID-19]-related Android (Google Play) and iOS (App Store) app ecosystems, derived from Google Play (play.google.com) and Apple's App Store (apps.apple.com) between June–July, 2020, and enriched with data from app market data providers App Annie (appannie.com) and AppBrain (appbrain.com). This information includes: (a) details about each Android or iOS app (N = 410 and 253, respectively); (b) version histories for each Android or iOS app from App Annie (N = 4,440 and 2,823 version releases, respectively); (c) details about the software libraries and permissions embedded in each Android app from AppBrain (N = 7,335 software libraries and 2,673 permissions); (d) ‘regexmatch’ matrices with detected software libraries, permissions, and search terms per app; and (e) (high-resolution) information graphics created from these sources (created with assistance from the DensityDesign Lab at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy). The Android application package (APK) files of 256 ‘editorial’ Android apps covered in this study are included in the Internet Archive’s ‘COVID-19_Apps’ collection (archive.org/details/COVID-19_Apps) upon our request. The dataset is one of the outcomes of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Rapid Response Grant ‘COVID-19 App Store and Data Flow Ecologies’ (2020); and is deposited for the (open access) journal article: Dieter, M., Helmond, A., Tkacz, N., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. (2021, June 23) Pandemic platform governance: Mapping the global ecosystem of COVID-19 response apps. Internet Policy Review, 10(3). Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.3.1568.