[Air-L] Twitter no longer allowing use for scholarship - Update

[Amanda Lenhart]

On Friday, I had a conversation at conference with someone I know who works at Twitter. We talked about this exact issue. And while Twitter can't change back the API because of other problems the change was fixing, she would very much like to give academics and non-profit researchers access to Twitter data. However, she has to push through a proposal internally to make this happen. She said it would help her make the case if I could tell her what parts of the data set researchers wanted to access. 

I offered to ping the AoIR list to get a sense of what people want and need from Twitter to be able to do/continue their research.

Also, one thing my friend did mention -- because Twitter data can never be fully anonymized, there might be some limitations on what kind of analysis you could do - mostly along the lines of limits on analysis that would reveal information about the individual that they had not made explicit and which might be harmful (e.g. Using network analysis to speculate on users' sexual orientation).

So, please email me off-list and I'll compile the types of data requests and send them along to my Twitter friend. 

Thanks,

Amanda


Amanda Lenhart
Pew Research Center
alenhart at pewinternet.org

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Devin Gaffney
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 2:43 PM
To: Rhiannon Bury
Cc: air-l at aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Twitter no longer allowing use for scholarship

Yes, basically the hammer has come down on services like mine (140kit) and others (TwapperKeeper, The Archivist). We can no longer export raw data catalogs to researchers. Researchers can, of course, collect their own data, but REST access to the API has been effectively shut down for any newcoming researchers (they will no longer whitelist IPs for that service, which upped the requests/hr from 150 to 20,000). Stream and Search have been unaffected, it seems. Basically, the implication in the article is that researchers who don't have access to code or need that REST pipeline are effectively shut out. Our solution, which is located in PDF form on our site (http://140kit.com), basically involves analytics sharing among researchers in place of raw data catalogs, and perhaps raw data catalog access when you're actually publishing something on a case-by-case basis. It's not the best solution, but it will work, as Twitter has ok'd it. I just got off the phone with Twapper Keeper, 
 and we have tentatively agreed to figure out a system where the data on his site is analyzed and at least maintained for everyone.

Devin

On Mar 4, 2011, at 11:29 AM, Rhiannon Bury wrote:

> Ooops, meant to send to the list. Sorry for the spam. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Rhiannon Bury <rcbury at rogers.com>
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Sent: Fri, March 4, 2011 12:26:00 PM
> Subject: Twitter no longer allowing use for scholarship
> 
> 
> 
> I just came across this article via RWW twitter feed:
> 
> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_recent_changes_to_twitters_terms_of_service_mi.php
> 
> 
> Does anyone here know anything more or has anyone been directly affected?
> 
> Rhiannon 
> 
> 
> Rhiannon Bury, PhD
> Associate Professor,
> Women's and Gender Studies
> Athabasca University
> Canada's Open University
> rbury at athabascau.ca
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