[Air-L] Update on simple historical Twitter hashtag searches

Deen Freelon dfreelon at gmail.com
Fri Mar 8 10:18:52 PST 2013


Hmm, just tested the search API with an old hashtag and it looks like 
it's still only trawling up to a week back in time. Maybe Twitter hasn't 
rolled out historical access to the API yet, or maybe I'm just 
#doinitwrong. ~DEEN

On 3/8/2013 11:20 AM, Scott Rodgers wrote:
>
>
> Dear Air-L,
>
>
>
> I thought I should follow up with a small but perhaps not so insignificant
> update on my query to the list from January (see below) where I outlined my
> difficulties in accessing 'historical'
> Twitter data, specifically a simple search of all tweets using a specific
> hashtag over around a two year period.
>
>   
>
> Without getting too
> prematurely excited, it does seem that Twitter has listened to complaints that
> this rather basic search functionality should be provided to general users, not
> just big data analysis companies. Today when I searched for a specific hashtag
> in the ‘discover’ tab, I noticed that a user can indeed now go back (apparently)
> indefinitely and read all tweets using a particular hashtag.
>
>
>
> Very best,
>
> Scott
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Scott Rodgers
>
> <rodgers_scott at hotmail.com>wrote:
>
>   
>
>> Hello all,
>> Apologies if I am about to jump in with a
> question discussed previously
>
>> (if so, I am happy to look through the
> archives) but I have been spending a
>
>> lot of time trying get a sense of how one can
> access 'historical' Twitter
>
>> data. A collaborator and I have a fairly
> small-scale project, for which
>
>> we'd like to look back about 2 years at maybe
> 1-3 specific hashtags all
>
>> related to a local neighbourhood campaign.
>  From what I have garnered from a
>
>> lot of looking around, the only way to get at
> historical data is by
>
>> purchasing services from third parties with
> access to the Twitter fire
>
>> hose. The problem there is that such companies
> only seem to offer much more
>
>> extensive services than we need - we do not
> need, for instance, full-scale
>
>> quantitative analytics of tweet data, mood,
> and the like. We simply want to
>
>> generate a list of tweets using a certain
> hashtag over a certain period,
>
>> for the purposes of qualitative analysis (it
> would be linked with
>
>> interviews and other secondary information)
>>   .
>> Any help or pointers would be much
> appreciated.
>
>> Very best,
>> Scott Rodgers
>> www.publiclysited.com
>   		 	   		
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-- 
Deen Freelon, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
American University School of Communication
Office: Asbury 228A
dfreelon at gmail.com
http://dfreelon.org




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