From posts to proof: Classifying the evidentiary uses of social media traces in refugee status determination

Abstract

Evidence is notoriously scarce in refugee status determination procedures. Digital traces from social media arise as a new form of evidence used by migration authorities and asylum claimants alike to support decision-making. Yet how exactly these traces factor into the evidentiary assessment of claims remains largely unaccounted for, especially in light of minimal precedence and procedural guidelines. With an empirical grounding in cases from the Danish Immigration Service and Refugee Appeals Board, this article’s contribution is two-fold. First, it identifies the evidentiary purposes of digital trace data from asylum claimants’ social media by developing a classification with four distinct clusters. These clusters identify four areas where digital traces from social media factor into the procedure: Establishing baseline information about the claimant, approximating exposure, corroborating or challenging claims about identity or past events, and identifying external conditions in the country of origin. Our classification reveals that digital traces from social media inform the evidentiary assessment of claims in ways that extend toward assessments of credibility and risk of persecution. Second, it contributes to the literature on the use of digital traces as evidence in asylum decision-making by placing the findings in the context of refugee law’s “fact-finding crisis.” We conclude that social media frequently arises as 'silent evidence' that remains available to inform the background knowledge of decision-makers without explicitly being accounted for as evidence.